[danans]

While it's not nearly as small as the one in the article, my house is on the smaller end of many Bay Area homes (1600 sqft on a very narrow lot). But nobody who visits believes that it's only 1600 sqft - they all think it's closer to 2000, probably because the architect vaulted the entry/living-room ceiling to 15ft, and the upstairs bedrooms to 13 ft.

What's harder about living in a small house as your primary home (not a vacation home like the article) is storage space, especially when you have kids.

There are also clever ways of doing built-in storage in a small home that minimize the use of living space. Of course you also can't be a packrat.

I recommend Dwell magazine as a great source for small living space design ideas.

[lucaspiller]

I find it ironic that you call 1600 sqft "small". Here is a pretty standard 700 sqft house in the UK that a family of 4 would comfortably fit in - I wouldn't really call this small:

http://m.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/36576725?search_ident...

[danans]

I don't know if the price on that listing is wrong, but 45000GBP ~= $68000. At 700 sqft, that is about $90/sqft. Average price/sqft of central Sheffield homes seems to be $225/sqft (http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/city_result.jsp?country...). The Bay Area's halfway decent neighborhoods are now somewhere north of $500/sqft.

On topic, though, I agree with your statement about the irony. I have family in the UK and the ideas of whether a house is "large" or "small" is completely different compared to the US. Ultimately real estate is local, and my place is small compared to nearby ~2500+ sqft Silicon Valley homes.

2 generations ago, families of 4 lived in 700 sqft houses in the US. We've supersized over the decades.

[maxerickson]

It isn't surprising, the US is relatively empty compared to the UK. California is about 40% the density of the UK, the citified regions of the east coast are denser than the UK average, but that is about it.

There are also substantially different histories in play (when was the last time the UK government was giving 65 hectares to anybody that asked? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts ).

[alricb]

when was the last time the UK government was giving 65 hectares to anybody that asked?

I think it was a bit after 1066, if you had the good luck of being Norman and if William was feeling generous that day.