How Big Is a House in Western Mass? Square Footage and Lot Size by Town

Two houses, both listed at the same price, both an hour from Springfield. One is 1,200 square feet on a fifth of an acre. The other is 2,587 square feet on five. Neither listing will tell you that it is typical for its town, and both are.

Across the 206,977 single-family homes on the assessment rolls of these 101 towns, the median house runs from 1,200 square feet in Holland to 2,587 in Alford. The median town sits at 1,645.

The Lot Is Where The Region Splits

House size varies by a factor of about two across the region. Lot size varies by a factor of about 35, and that is the difference people actually feel.

At one end, Springfield has a median lot of 0.17 acres, which is a city lot: a driveway, a small garden, neighbours on both sides. At the other, Hawley runs to 6.00. The regional median is 1.43 acres, which tells you how rural the bulk of this region really is.

That acreage is not free, and this is the part buyers moving from a city systematically underestimate. Land is mowing, plowing, tree work and a driveway you maintain yourself. It is also, in most of these towns, a well and a septic system rather than a water bill, and what those actually commit you to is a real budget line rather than a quirk.

Price Per Square Foot Reorders Everything

Divide each town's median assessment by its median living area and the region rearranges itself in a way the headline price list does not show.

Alford comes out dearest at roughly $412 per square foot of assessed value, against about $112 in Monroe. That is a factor of roughly 4, inside one region, for a square foot of ordinary house.

The towns at the top of that ranking are mostly the second-home towns, where the buyer is pricing against a New York or Boston income rather than a local one, which we go through in the second-home picture. The towns at the bottom are the mill cities, where there is more housing than there is demand for it and has been for fifty years.

Treat the column as a rough guide rather than a precise one. It divides one median by another, which is not the same as averaging each property's own ratio, and the difference matters most in towns with an unusual mix of housing.

What The Assessor Counts As A Square Foot

One caution before the table, because it explains most of the odd rows in it. Living area is recorded by each town's own assessor, and towns differ on what counts.

A finished basement is living area in some towns and not in others. An unheated enclosed porch, a converted attic, a walk-out lower level built into a hillside, all of these are handled inconsistently across 101 separate assessing departments. In a hilly region where a great many houses have a lower level that is partly above ground, that is not a marginal issue.

So a town's figure is reliable for comparing houses within that town and only indicative for comparing across town lines. The parcel count column tells you how many properties the median rests on, which is worth reading before you lean on any single row.

Every Town, Fiscal 2026

Sortable and filterable. One town's reported lot size is not arithmetically possible against its own land area, so its lot column shows no record rather than a figure we do not believe.

How To Use It

The practical value of this table is calibration. Before you view anything in a town, know what normal looks like there. A 1,400 square foot house is small in Alford and comfortably average in Holland, and the same listing photographs will read completely differently once you know which.

It is also the fastest way to see what your money is actually buying. What a fixed budget buys across the region covers the price side; this is the size side, and the two together are the comparison worth making. For a specific property rather than a town median, look the address up: the assessment record carries that property's own living area, lot size and year built.