[DannyBee]

Price per square foot is .. not always a great metric.

Price per square foot tends to goes down as square footage goes up.

(For example, a 1700 sq ft home in mountain view will cost you 2 mil. A 3400sq ft one in the same place will cost ~3 mil, not 4 mil).

[declan]

Also price per square foot doesn't reflect lot size. Orinda will, I suspect, have larger lots than Rockridge.

If you wanted to buy a decrepit 600 sq. ft shack on a 10-acre lot in downtown Woodside, a price per square foot metric might seem like it should be <$1M. In reality the property would sell for $10M+ based on the land value, with the shack having negative value because of the cost to tear it down. (Ob. Steve Jobs Woodside reference here.)

[gdudeman]

Agreed. It's an imperfect measure.

I lobbied to put both on here, but then you end up with an unreadable map.

[thrownaway2424]

You do have to pick something and run with it, I understand that. But price per square foot is pretty bogus because one cannot buy housing by the square foot. You have to buy it per _house_. I think you could make a fair comparison if you went with median 2-bedroom sale price instead.

[gdudeman]

Sure, but there are areas where there really aren't many 2 bedroom houses or they aren't really representative of the local real estate.

[melvinmt]

Maybe just an average price per bedroom.