Cost Per Square Foot
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Summary: cost per square foot is largely meaningless. You don't know what it means until you consider:
- Does it include builder's profit?
- Does it include livable space only? (or other such as garage or porch)
- Does it include basement?
- Measured for livable space (cost to build the complete home / sf of livable space only) only as the claimed industry standard of measuring cost of a home. Thus, a large garage and porch or upscale interior finish drive the cost up [1]. Does not include land.
- Average USA cost is $150 builder grade [2]. But this figure is different than the industry standard cost method - here they don't include land NOR non-livable space such as garage. Thus, the Forbes definition is not the standard definition.
- Median is more useful with nonsymmetric distributions, such as ones skewed by high cost outliers such as housing. [3]. The average is higher, median is the average Joe price.
- Average price of a new home USA is $487K, media is $416k [4]
- Median cost is $416k, 480k average
- Median sf is 2300