I am rather tired of everyone's obsession with PPSF (price per square foot) or even PPCF (price per cubic foot) that may be more valuable. Instead, I'd like our real estate world to re-evaluate what square footage actually means and start to focus more on usability, or UPSF (usability per square foot).

Developers and banks obsess over square footage, as the higher the price per square foot, the happier the developer/bank. While they obsess with these figures, and rightfully so to ensure that unprofitable buildings don't get built, I've always remained more focused on how this square footage can function. How usable is the square footage? Not all square footage is created equal. Sometimes, a 500sf living room can feel smaller and less usable than a 350sf living room.

A 24ft x 14ft bedroom easily fits a king-sized bed, desk, sofa, two chairs, and a dresser. Those furniture items also fit into a 20ft x 12ft room. The difference in square footage, close to 100 square feet, isn't actually needed. A work desk used to house a big chunky computer that needed at least 3ft of depth to fit the computer and a keyboard. Today a laptop requires 18" of depth comfortably. Old chunky TV's used to take up 6 square feet and housed in large armoires, today that's close to zero with flat-screen, wall-mounted TV's.

The best homes are designed by those who obsess equally with the interiors, how they flow and function, how usable each square foot is to those living and using that home. Maybe the future will make 2,000 sf really usable, well engineered and designed, homes more valuable than a less usable, poorly designed 2,500 sf home?