The Average Home Size in Every U.S. State | Hacker News Reader

The Average Home Size in Every U.S. State

visualcapitalist.com

39 pointsgmays21 comments

I love the dataset, but this has to be one of the worst visualizations I've seen: it takes way too long to scroll through the whole list and the differences in the size of the rendered houses is essentially meaningless to the average observer.

And it would be nice to have aunit of measure toggle between feet2 and m2

Seconded...... The insistence on displaying data only in units the majority of the world has condemned to obsolescence is baffling.

It's data about the US, where such units are the default.

> It's data about the US

Posted on the internet with a worldwide audience. (Including this HN audience of engineers and scientists).

> where such units are the default.

All the more baffling!

The article and even the source article are like reading a research paper about beehives written for bee dancers.

Meters? Space per inhabitant? Irrelevant to your next hive where water should only be .5 seconds of beeswagger dance away!

But the audience is global...

And even in the US most of science and the engineering world now use the metric system. Imperial is largely just a public facing/public consumption unit of measure now.

"it's data about the US, where such units are the default."

You change units depending on what the data is about. Thats wild

But what if your data is about the US AND UK? What do you do then ?

Another case of a "creative visualization" that should have been a table.

Also where deciles would be helpful to understand the distribution.

I don't have kids so maybe that's a part of it, but anything over 1500-1600 sq ft. feels too large and like a lot of maintenance to me.

I felt similarly, with a wife and a kid even. In a 2500 sqft house, I often got frustrated because I felt like I constantly couldn't find them.

1600 was fine. We're in about 2k now, and definitely wouldn't want to go any bigger.

I'm in a 1950 sqft home and find it way too small (2 little kids with tiny rooms, one big open great room that combines dining room, living room and kitchen). I think layout makes a big difference too .. if you have multiple floors, you end up with wasted space. Also, basements and garages are not counted, and they make a big difference.

Having a sufficiently big home where you can get lost and feel “alone” is the principle criteria when I am looking at homes.

They should probably normalize this for the age of the housing - older homes tend to be smaller

Quite interesting that New York ranks second smallest and a whopping $420/sqft. The data are quite skewed by the NYC area. We sold our typical Western New York home (~1,700 sqft) in 2016 for about $42/sqft.

I live in a relatively cheap part of the U.K. on the outskirts of a country village. My house I about 10 times that price per square foot.

It never ceases to amaze me how cheap land is in the US

How is Utah's size that big? Do they even have forests in Utah?

Lots of kids.

What is the connection with forests?

Lumber used in housing construction often has to be trucked in from Idaho, Montana, or Colorado.

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