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:
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.
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 ).
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.