Why is Price per SqFt down when the Sold price is up?
In another episode of data is weird, you may come across a situation where the median sold price is up one month while the sold price per square foot is down. While it's not intuitive, that does happen. It has to do with the product mix. For example, there are two properties that sold for $300,000 each. One of them was 1500 square feet, and the other one was 2000 square feet. That means the first one sold for $300,000 divided by 1500, or $200/sqft. Using that same math, the second property sold for $150/sqft. This illustrates that larger homes sell for lower dollars per square foot. So even as the prices in a market go up, if the houses that are selling that month are generally bigger than those that sold the prior month, the $/sqft can easily go down.
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