Small homes may not always be cheap, relatively speaking: This 479 foot condo listed for $659,000, or a hefty $1,375/square foot for the little place. It's in the process of wrapping up a sale right now (though still included here because such things don't always follow through), so apparently that doesn't bother the buyers.

We've noted this Diamond Heights loft (presently offered for $458,000) before for its attempt at the old mirror trick, this time via a mirror almost as big as the 474 square foot unit all on its own.

Whereas mapping homes by price (high or low) tends to cluster them in a few neighborhoods on different flanks of the city, tiny homes seem to cluster around the center of the city map. That makes this Potrero Hill case b it of an outlier, where $589,000 buys you 453 square feet. Of course, the way San Francisco is laid out, neighborhoods both trendy and blue collar alike have to think small.

The Tenderloin, of course, has a long history of small living, going back even to its Gold Rush days. Sympthony Towers is a fairly new building, though, built in 2007 and determined to maximize the room it has with condos like this one, a mere 391 feet and presently listed for just under $520,000.

But SoMa is the future of tiny condos in the city, and you're probably only going to see more as the city's Central SoMa plans kicks in and allows even more housing development in years to come. This place is a minuscule 370 feet (for $495,000), and yet there are at least four smaller places on the market after it.

One of the great things about real estate in San Francisco is that it's often useless to bother talking about the great views: Half of the homes in the city have great views, and the humblest of apartments look out onto the same vistas as the most grand of mansions. The micro homes at 388 Fulton peer out on the dome of City Hall, which is perhaps all of the big thinking a resident of this 354 foot hideaway will need.

The second smallest apartment for sale citywide, and also one of the lease expensive market-rate units at just under $340,000. The secret: It's a tenancy-in-common deal. With only 330 feet, it's almost impossible to believe that a home can get any smaller. But at least one can...

At 268 feet, this "maybe loft" (as the ad describes it) scrapes the edges of what can even be considered an apartment for $429,000. As Micro Week reminds us, to the right buyer, home can come in any shape or any size.