Is 1200 house too small?

[Lupe Arredondo]

I need some insight and opinions. My partners and I are trying to decide on building house that will be affordable to end users $100K-$130K, but "easy" on the pocket.

We are currently think of building multiple small modest homes that we can build on the cheap without giving up on Square footage. In your guys opinion, is 1200sq-ft to small? The neighborhood has a lot of old houses at 900 sq ft or smaller, but it has a great community of people. 

Size is my primary concern. Money is not really an issue, Just size.

[Jon Bachman]

My recommendation (if you have access to the MLS) is to look up a 1-2 mile radius of the neighborhood's past sales for the last year. I'm a spreadsheet geek, but if you sort the sheet into all of the different categories like house type, price, sf, lot size, beds, bath, etc., you can filter whatever category your most concerned with.

For example, your concern is size. Filter out on Excel square footage in ascending order. Where you see your category exceed the 1200 sf mark in the column, note the row number. This row number divided by the overall rows in the spreadsheet will give you a percentage of homes in your "neighborhood" for the past year that sold with less than 1200 sf.

Every market is different, and what Joe is selling in California could be very different than Bill in Ohio. Do this formula and the proof will be in the pudding for you!