How Long Does It Take People To Decide To Buy A House?

Have you ever wondered how long on average it takes people to buy a new house? The time starts from the minute that you walk into your estate agent and start the discussion going. The average time to buy a house in the United Kingdom is probably a lot shorter than you think.

In fact it is surprisingly short. There was a study conducted into house buying patterns recently and this revealed that the average decision to buy a house takes eight minutes! Yes you read that right it takes an average of eight minutes for people to make the biggest purchasing decision of their lives.

How People assess Houses

You will probably be interested to know that 6 out of 10 potential buyers will reject a house on their list even before they walk through the door. If they have to spend around four and a half minutes waiting outside then this is likely to give them cold feet.

They will take a look outside the property and notice just about everything in that time. The state of the windows, any brickwork abnormalities, the state of the house next door and even if you have cut your front lawn and tended to your front garden. The trick here is to let your prospective buyers into your house fast!

Then there were the fifteen percent of potential buyers that fell in love with a house just by standing outside. It didn’t matter what the condition of the outside was like they were in love with this property and they were going to have it. This accounts for the fact that 18% of people purchase the very first house that they see.

The rest like to look around quite a lot before deciding. It was found that on average people will look at quite a large number of houses – around 40. With the advent of the Internet, 25 of these will be online and the remainder will be real viewings.

Things that Annoy House Hunters

Another survey by OnePoll and Foxtons found that there were a number of things that annoyed house hunters. The biggest of these (stated by 75% of the participants) is that the image of the house online or in the estate agent’s does not match up with what the house looks like in reality.

Here is the list in order:

1. The road is busy and there are many cars parked
2. There are damp patches
3. The house is situated on a main road
4. There are cracks in the walls
5. The layouts are awkward
6. Smoke can be smelt
7. The road has too many fast food outlets
8. The house or the garden is overlooked
9. The driveway is shared
10. The paint on the walls is dirty or peeling

There is nothing in these findings that should come as a surprise to anyone. House hunters will be spending a lot of money on their new home so they are bound to be finicky over things.