I don't know if there's a place on Lemmy yet to post interesting charts/graphs, so I've just been dropping stuff here.
Average size of homes in selected EU countries and USA
It's nice when they tell you upfront that the data is cherry-picked
this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
50 points (98.1% liked)
Just Post
454 readers
825 users here now
Just post something 💛
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
Since England & Wales are highlighted I’m guessing this chart was made by a news outlet from England or Wales?
Also, a tiny percentage of the population in the US has 90% of the money lol
Their ghastly giant homes skew the average upward
How would it look if it included the amount of space each person has when they have to share accommodation because rent is unaffordable for a massive chunk of the population?
Yep, let's look at median size, or how many people live in apartments/condo/townhouse, etc.
The USA (3.797 mi^2 ) is almost the same size of all of Europe (4.077 mi^2 ) and less than half the population (333m vs 746m)
Lots of space here, cheap land, big houses.
245sqm ≈ 2637sqft for those of the Imperial persuasion…
Having just moved from an 1100sqft(102sqm) home to an 1800sqft(167sqm) home, that just seems absurdly large to me.
True, I wonder what the median is
I wondered myself and briefly tried googling it. I didn’t find any sources I really trusted, but the answered I saw for median were very similar to average.
That's crazy, unless the count of houses has increased tremendously since the 80's (it may have).
Seeing a distribution would help. Also seeing the definitions.
Then I've also seen a house double in size when you add heat to a basement and proper egress. Lots of houses built in the 50's/60's can double legal size this way, without altering the footprint. You can get 3000 sq ft on a typical suburban 1/3 acre lot doing this.
I found these links that look useful from the St. Louis Fed and Census Bureau that look interesting; the Census in particular looks like they offer home construction data going back to the 1950s in Excel format. That could be interesting to play with.
I do seem to remember articles about how many new homes have been built since especially the ’90s as interest rates came down, and how much larger houses started getting. Also anecdotally, apart from your example of finishing basements, I’ve noticed more and more older homes on desirable property being torn down and larger homes being built in their place, some of the old homes being as new as the 1980s and rarely even newer.
Thanks for the links, now I'll be down the rabbit hole in excel!
Yea, I've seen a LOT of properties bought for the full price just to raze it and build new.
Interesting stuff.
There are a couple Data is Beautiful communities, [email protected] and [email protected] that could be good fits for content like this, but of course it’s always fine for here, too.
Aha! That would be a good fit. Thanks!