A lot of people use the “price per square foot” to compare pricing of different properties. The per square foot value is literally the amount you get when you divide the size of the house into the purchase price.

While this can be a useful tool if the properties are in the same area and are almost the exact same size, it can be a deceiving tool when comparing houses of widely (more than about 50-100sf) differing sizes. Once houses get farther away in size than that, there are other methods to use to compare values. They still take size into account (much like they take other features like garage spaces, updates, lot size and other features), but they don’t do the simple calculation of multiplying the size of the house by the “per square foot” value of a comparable property.