And here is the prime example of perverse incentives when it comes to housing - particularly in the US. Only focusing on acquisition cost. How about cost of u

And here is the prime example of perverse incentives when it comes to housing - particularly in the US. Only focusing on acquisition cost. How about cost of utilities per square foot over 10 years? My money is on the smaller, vastly better constructed smaller home than traditional build to minimum code mass market crappy tract housing that dominates much of American suburbia. Who lives in one house for the majority of their life any more? It's pretty rare. In my development it was only a few thousand more to double the insulation and convert to more efficient HVAC - less than half the people building a new house did it. Heck it was $750 to insulate the garage - maybe 1/3 did - you can tell because the people who did got insulated garage doors with windows. A neighbor across the street bought a house where the previous owner didn't insulate the garage. The master bedroom is over the garage. I asked him if his master bedroom got cold in the winter - he got wide eyed and said that as a matter of fact it did. I pointed out the insulation difference - he had a buddy come over and help him pull down the drywall in the garage, they insulated all the walls and added more to the ceiling and re-drywalled and the difference was night and day. Building codes tightened up quite a bit in 2010 so I think they force builders to do that insulation for everything now, but that's just one example of how people care more about granite countertops than paying attention to core infrastructure that could impact a building for it's entire life. A pithier way to put it - much of your square footage discrepancy is from people sacrificing short term cost for long term costs we all pay for.