It's a question that most people think they know the answer to, but do they? I know my wife has made this assumption many times that we should have bought a house with more land attached to it because then it would have appreciated faster. Seems logical, but is is true?
I decided to crunch the numbers here in Prosper. I didn't want too large a sample size since the MLS limits me to 5,000 results, after that it starts culling data by date. So to make sure I had all the data, I looked first for homes over 1acre that ever sold in Prosper. Also, to keep it under the 5,000 result threshold, I looked for homes in Prosper that had at least a 2 car garage, and were between .13 and .33ac and this gave me 4,971 results.
The first graph are homes that sold in Prosper, over all time, from MLS data that were on at least 1 acre. The vertical axis is price per square foot.
The 2nd graph shows homes that had lots in size from .13 and .33ac with 2 car garages. Remember, I was trying to keep under the 5,000 data point threshold to keep the MLS from culling data.
The trendline for the homes on smaller lots is noticeably steeper. While the price per square foot is overall lower than the price per square foot on 1 acre or larger lots, the price appreciation is markedly better on the smaller lots.
Who'd a thunk it?