Tour soars beyond your dream home

Maybe the Street of Dreams should be called the Street Beyond Your Dreams.

Just look at some of the awesome homes by local luxury builders, featured in this section. Read about the event, which continues through Oct. 28.

Then consider these results of a survey conducted by Northshore Fireplace in Evanston, Illinois.

The most desired size for dream homes averaged 2,195 square feet with 7.5 rooms, though millennials surveyed wanted slightly fewer rooms at 5.67.

(“Bonus: less to clean,” the survey report observed. “Amen,” said the young boomer writing this column.)

About those millennials, 20 percent said they “get anxiety just thinking about owning a home.” (Amen, the young boomer said, even after 19 years!)

“Millennials came of age during the recession of 2008, and found an employment scarcity when they graduated college,” the report notes. “Growing up with financial instability as the norm has an effect on future purchases, such as a 30-year mortgage.”

Yes, people are finally recognizing that and saying it out loud: A generation of homebuyers still has something like PTSD from the Great Recession.

If they do buy a house, most millennials responding said it would have a modern look. Boomers and Gen-Xers preferred traditional interior design.

Nearly half of respondents, 46 percent, said they would spend the most time in the living room or family room of their dream home — and it would be a big room, “great” or not.

“That’s usually the hub of a house, where the TV and comfiest couch reside and families relax and lounge, so square footage matters,” the report said.

This is interesting: “While luxurious real estate is a fun daydream, many people are actually closer to owning their dream home than expected — in fact, 64 percent ... believe they will be able to obtain their

dream home in their lifetime.

“And of the respondents who said they are already living in their dream home, 73 percent own a home rather than rent; 51 percent live in the suburbs; and 40 percent now live in a 1,400-2,600-squarefoot home.” (Size is not everything!)

Other interesting tidbits:

• “Three quarters of people surveyed said they feel that owning a home is a lifestyle choice, not a necessity or requirement to a ‘good life.’ ”

• “Most respondents said they favored owning their dream home out in the country, with land and privacy as the most desired luxury. Living on a beach was also popular, and the suburban life was also called out as the most popular setting for millennials.”

This is hard to believe: “Only 15 percent stated that the quality of schools nearby was an important factor, and only 11 percent stated that having nearby entertainment and nightlife mattered to their dream home location, which is usually the biggest plus for a citycentric location.” (Who ARE these people?)

• Anxious or not, 60 percent of millennials plan to own a home in the next five years.

The survey was conducted by Northshore Fireplace in March using the crowdsourcing Amazon Mechanical Turk platform to survey 2,000 people, who owned a home or planned to within five years, from all parts of the country across different age groups.

They were asked their views on homeownership and what their ideal home would look like and cost given a list of multiple-choice questions and written-in answers.

The three most common words written in? “Comfortable,” “cozy” and “spacious,” which surely fall equally across all generations.

For more details from the survey, go to north shorefireplace.com/ resources/americasdream-home/.