Just as Gen Z is resurfacing the Tuscan Mom and McMansion aesthetics of the aughts, the harsh reality is that new homes are actually getting smaller and more expensive.
The average new home in America is now 2,175 square feet, a 5.6% decline from the peak reached in February 2019, according to a new report from NewHomeSource shared with Fortune. That’s roughly 125 square feet gone from the typical new home over six years, which amounts to the size of a home office or a spare bedroom. More than 80% of the top 50 housing markets saw average home sizes shrink between 2019 and 2025. Even as homes shrank, prices kept climbing—median single-family home prices rose nearly 48% between 2019 and 2024, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
