Generally, yes; the same budget usually buys a bigger, newer home in Florida than in most of the Northeast. The driver is land and permitting. Florida and much of the Southeast build far more new housing and sit at a lower price per square foot, because where land is plentiful and building is easier, per-foot pricing stays lower. Northeast pricing reflects older, denser, land-constrained metros with their own wage bases and job markets. One caution so you read the comparison correctly: a lower price per square foot does not automatically make a place the better economic deal. If you are comparing two places to live, weigh the whole picture: jobs, taxes, insurance, commute, and how each local market is supplied. To pressure-test a specific pair of markets, look at each one's active inventory versus its pre-pandemic norm and its days on market. Those two numbers tell you more about local conditions than any national headline.