What You Consider Important When Buying a Home: Measuring Priorities in Market Research

June 17th, 2015
Amy  McCarthy | Research Director
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The weather is starting to warm up and more of us are venturing outside, myself included. Walking my dog around the neighborhood I’ve noticed a number of for-sale signs and it reminds me of my own recent home buying experience. It was exciting and at the same time stressful. Once I made the decision to buy I started watching all the home buying shows and attending open houses to figure out my list of must-haves and nice to haves. I wondered how my list stacked up against others who went through, or are going through, the home buying process.

Using our online panel of consumers, I employed TRC’s proprietary Bracket™ exercise to find out what homebuyers find most important when considering buying a home. Bracket™ is a tournament-based analytic approach to understanding priorities. For each participant, Bracket™ randomly assigns the items being evaluated into pairs. Participants choose the winning item from each pair; that item moves on to the next round. Rounds continue until there is one “winner” per participant. Bracket™ uses this information to prioritize the remaining items, and calculate the relative distance between them.

I created a list of 13 things to consider. I didn’t include standard house stats: # of bedrooms, # of baths, etc. as I tested those separately using a conjoint analysis (my next blog will dive into what I did there).

  • Proximity to work
  • Proximity to family
  • School system
  • Size of lot
  • Fenced-in yard
  • Dedicated parking (i.e. garage, drive-way, parking lot)
  • Master bathroom
  • Basement storage
  • Wood flooring
  • Open floor plan
  • Updated kitchen
  • Updated bathroom
  • Pool

We interviewed 197 recent or soon-to-be homebuyers and the Bracket™ exercise revealed that size of lot, school system, updated kitchen and dedicated parking are given high consideration when buying a home. A pool, wood flooring and basement storage are given low consideration.

How to prioritize in market research home buying

 

  • How did this compare to my list? Size of lot, school system and dedicated parking were at the top of my list as well. However, a fenced in yard and wood flooring were highly important too given the fact I have a dog. My next question was is my priority list similar to other dog owners? Apparently not. Looking at participants who own a dog, their priority order is very similar to total. I guess I’m an anomaly.

I found it interesting that open floor plan and wood flooring were not higher on the list. Anyone who has ever watched a home buying show knows open floor plan and wood flooring seem to always be at the top of the list.

Did I get my must haves or did I compromise? After 8 long months of house hunting I found my home. I walked in and immediately knew it was mine. The lot size was perfect, it was in a good school system, it had dedicated parking, a partially fenced yard and wood floors throughout. Maggie and I are loving every minute of our new home!