When Mick Jagger sang that you can't always get what you want, he didn't mean the US house market. For most people it's recently been you can't get what you want period. Now, you get even less than you would have.

Point2, a division of Yardi Systems, has been poking around the data and did an interesting analysis. When prices are up and mortgages are really up, home buyers have to set their sites lower. And smaller.

"Aggressive rate hikes (after the latest increase, the average mortgage rate hovers around 7%), coupled with sky-high home prices mean buyers are bleeding money," Point2 says. "But, aside from losing purchasing power, homebuyers — and especially post-pandemic homebuyers — are also losing what they wanted the most: More living space. Translating the losses in purchasing power into square footage reveals the saddest story: In just a few months, buyers in the 100 largest cities lost between 92 and a staggering 1,140 square feet of space."