Our square footage ceiling tops out at 850 feet with this Sunset pick, a two bed, one bath affair circa 1941 for $899,000. While it's certainly not big, it's not exactly what you usually have in mind when you hear the word "micro"...

...just like this other 850 foot, two bed, one bath house down in Ingleside. It's 19 years the elder to the Sunset House, presently listed for $689,000 after being off the market for decades—so long that the city doesn't even have a record of its last sale.

Getting smaller! This Listerine-colored two bed, one bath, '40s era house (not far away from our last two bed, one bath, '40s era house) cuts the space down to 800 feet. Which as we'll see in a moment is a somewhat popular figure. At $928,000, this is (perhaps unexpectedly) one of the priciest small houses on offer today.

But Carver Street has Ramsell beat, being only 260 feet from end to end. It even intersects with Mayflower Street, which is only 90 feet. The pink pad in the middle of the block is (say it with us) two beds, one bath, and 800 feet, but presently listed for almost $1 million ($995,000).

Only a couple of blocks from the Cow Palace, this one just barely inches over the line to qualify as a San Francisco house. Though another modest 800 foot affair, it has a pretty sizeable backyard on its 2,500 foot lot, divided into four escalating tiers. (Which have seen better days, by the looks of them, but that's drought for you.)

The market dips under the 800 foot mark for the first time with this Sunnyside fixer from 1926, only 780 feet in all and listed for the bargain (by San Francisco standards) price of $599,000. No word on what precisely needs to be fixed in there--unless they simply feel that it ought to be bigger?

Whereas small condos tend to cluster around the center of the city, small single family houses seem to be a decidedly southern-lying phenomena. The fixer at 579 Clipper Street (714 square feet) sits just on the edge of Noe Valley. And, being a Noe Valley house, it racks up the highest list price of any of our micro houses: $999,000.

This tiny yellow house (670 feet) is set so far back from the sidewalk that it's vanished completely, so you'll just have to take our word for it that it's really there (and really listed for $628,000). And, yes, this once managed to land north of Market Street, the only of the 12.

Here it is, a 1906 house in the Outer Mission that's almost the most micro home listed right now. It's 660 square feet, so what could possibly be smaller? Well...