06/03/2026
I'm going to say the thing a lot of people in real estate quietly know but won't put in writing: price per square foot is one of the most misused numbers in the business, and around here it's costing regular people thousands.
Here's the move everybody makes. House down the street is 1,400 sq ft, sold for $245K. That's $175 a foot. So the bigger 2,800 sq ft house next door must be worth... $490K, right? Feels smart. It's flat wrong.
Bigger homes cost LESS per foot, not more. One roof, one furnace, one kitchen, all spread across more square footage. Take the little house's per-foot number, stretch it over a bigger floor plan, and you've just talked yourself into overpaying by tens of thousands.
And that number can't even see your lot. A ranch on five acres out toward Thorntown and the same ranch on a tiny lot in town can show the exact same price per foot and be $40K apart in value. The house didn't change. The land did. Your Zestimate has no clue, and that tidy little average you got online doesn't either.
So here's what appraisers already know and nobody's rushing to tell you: price per square foot is what you get AFTER you figure out value, not how you find it. Run it backwards and it'll burn you every single time. It's the laziest math in real estate, and it's the math that empties your wallet. That's exactly why I built my Clean PPSF calculation. It strips out the noise and gets you the true price per square foot for your property, not a lazy average. Ask me about it.
Want to know what your place is actually worth, not what some average says it should be? That's my job. Send me the address. I'll run the real numbers.