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For some folks, a larger home lot just means more area to mow and water, but given the choice, most homeowners prefer a bigger backyard and a little more land between themselves and their neighbors.
But lot sizes in Dallas-Fort Worth and statewide are shrinking, and a new study reveals that Texas is among the states with the smallest lots per square foot.
Angi, an online home services company, estimated the average lot size in each state and major metro based on more than 390,000 single-family home listings from Zillow.
I’ll spare you the “everything’s bigger in Texas” cliché — or maybe I didn’t — but suffice it to say that the Lone Star state didn’t fare well, especially in its four major metro areas. The study found that the typical lot size in Texas is a mere 9,540 square feet, ranking as the fifth smallest in the country.
That’s more than five Olympic-size swimming pools smaller than Vermont, which has the nation’s largest lots, at 78,409 square feet on average. Lots in Texas are also almost an acre smaller than second-ranked New Hampshire, where the typical lot size is 49,223 square feet.
Nevada had the nation’s smallest lots, with a typical size of 7,405 square feet.
Here’s a graphic showing the disparity from state to state.
The Angi study offers a couple of explanations: Many Vermont towns have strict zoning laws that set minimum lot sizes to preserve low population density and protect environmentally sensitive areas. By contrast, in Nevada, rapid housing growth and dry land encourage compact lawns.
Turning to metro areas, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington ranked 76th in the nation, with a typical lot size of 8,712 square feet.
That’s less than a cornhole court smaller than the typical lot size in Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, which ranked 73rd, at 8,930 square feet.
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land ranked 92nd in the U.S., with a typical lot size of 8,174 square feet. San Antonio-New Braunfels had the smallest lots of Texas’ major metros, ranking 97th nationwide with a typical lot size of just 7,405 square feet.
Denser cities with more expensive homes tend to have smaller lots, the Angi study notes. In San Francisco, where the typical home is $888,500, the average lot size is just 6,098 square feet — the smallest of any U.S. metro area. In Bridgeport, Conn., where the typical home is $433,000, the typical lot is 43,560 square feet, the largest of any metro area.
In terms of bang for your buck, Texas lawns are still relatively affordable, in large part because there are fewer limits on new housing development here than there are in many others.
In Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, the typical lot costs $53.41 per square foot. Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown has the state’s most expensive lots, at $69.84 per square foot.
In Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, the typical lot is $50.05 per square foot, and in the San Antonio-New Braunfels area, it’s $48.18.
Nationwide, typical lot prices ranged from $253.13 per square foot in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara to $10.60 per square foot in Flint, Michigan.
Newer homes, generally speaking, have smaller lots nationwide. The average lot size for a new-construction single-family home shrank from 18,760 per square feet in 1978 to a record low of 13,896 square feet in 2020, according to Census Bureau data cited by Angi.