More smaller homes are on the market in the South than pre-pandemic, Danielle Hale, Realtor.com's chief economist, told Insider.
Realtor.com's September monthly housing market trends report showed the average price per square foot rose by 52% in the South this year when compared to the same statistic from 2017 to 2019. It's driven the median listing price of homes up 35.7%. The difference between the rise in price per square foot and the rise in median listing price suggests, Hale said, that as listing prices were rising, the size of the homes for sale were shrinking.
"It might be that we're seeing more homes for sale in the more dense areas of these metros, where homes would likely be smaller," she said. "It might also be the case that new construction homes are a more significant share of active listings in these areas, and Census data has shown that builders are adapting to high home prices by cutting home size to enable more housing affordability."
Below, five cities in the South where homes have gotten smaller as they've gotten more expensive since the start of the pandemic.