It is one thing to pay a lot of money for a big house, but it is another to pay a lot of money for a smaller house. The price per square foot varies nationwide, and we set out to find out where your dollar gets you the least home.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed real estate listing website Realtor.com’s monthly inventory metro data. While Realtor.com has over 920 markets, we only considered cities with a population of 25,000 or more. Here we listed the 50 cities with highest median listing prices per square foot in February 2024. Ties were broken using the median list price. Median listing price per square foot in February 2023 and median listing price in February 2024 also came from Realtor.com. From the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey five-year estimates for 2022, we added median household income and population.
Because of our population threshold, the cities on the list do not include several small towns, such as Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, or Jackson, Wyoming. These and other similar smaller expensive towns are known seasonal vacation spots for wealthier visitors, even if the local residents are far less wealthy. (Also see: These Are the Most Affordable Housing Markets.)
Among the cities on the list where you would currently pay the most per square foot, 15 cities are in California, five in Florida, four are in Washington state, and three each are in Montana and Hawaii. The median list price per square foot in the cities on the list ranges from $303 to $1,279. While many also rank among the 50 most expensive housing markets based on median list price, several, including Miami and Panama City, Florida, do not.