Satisfaction not guaranteed
According to a new survey, the houseproud homeowner is becoming an endangered species. LUKE RIX-STANDING finds out why
THEY say a happy home comes down to who you share it with, but, according to a new survey, there’s an awful lot more to it. The research, commissioned by nested.com, found that more than half of those quizzed (53%) were unhappy with where they live, citing everything from cramped interiors to poor parking as reasons. Nationally, Leicester houses the most unsatisfied customers, with a table-topping twothirds of respondents from that region dreaming of a move. London comes next with 65%, and the south coast city of Plymouth comes in third, with 64%. At the other end of the scale, in Belfast, only a quarter of residents are planning to up sticks in search of a more perfect pad, followed by 40% in Edinburgh, and just under half in Brighton. Nested spokesperson Ben Bailey, says: “As a nation, we’re unsatisfied with where we live, and the majority of us are planning on moving again to bag the property of our dreams.” Wondering what’s making us such an unhappy bunch? Here are the top 10 causes, according to nested.com’s survey...
SIZE
FOR 57% of those surveyed this was an issue. UK homes started shrinking in the 1970s and have been getting gradually smaller ever since. According to research by LABC Warranty, the average Seventies living room clocked in at 24.89m2, which became 21.33m2 in the Nineties, and stands at just 17.09m2 today. The people have spoken: Size matters.
NUMBER OF BEDROOMS
ROOM-RELATED quibbles take up our second spot too, with 53% of respondents bringing this up, and how many bedrooms your home has is apparently almost as important as how large they are. From a peak 3.58 bedrooms per household in the 1980s, the modern UK home now averages fewer than three.
LOCATION
THE traditional market leader, for many homeowners, it’s still all about location, location, location for 52% of those surveyed. And it’s not just a mantra for estate agents – location has long topped the wish lists for house-buying Brits. In a 2015 survey by Santander, a third of Brits said that being close to work was their number one residential priority – ahead of space, investment potential, and even being near family.
PRICE
MONEY talks and always has and it was an issue for 50% of people. Government stats released in June showed that the average house price in the UK was upward of £230,000, while roughly half of all wealth in the UK is tied up in property, far and away the highest in the G7. Compared with our American and European cousins, Brits like to own rather than rent and value houses over flats. That may be fine if you got on the property ladder in 1980. In 2019, not so much.
PROXIMITY TO GREEN SPACES
CITED by nearly half of all respondents, it appears the public is finally waking up to the power of a daily dose of green. Earlier this year, a joint study by the Universities of Newcastle, Warwick and Sheffield found that living within 300m of green space was more important to mental wellbeing than conventional factors like income.
PARKING
THIS one’s a no-brainer: If your car is your primary mode of transport, you’re stumped if there’s nowhere to put it and 38% of people complained about this. Expect this figure to fall as private car ownership gives way to car clubs, congestion charges, and expanding public transport networks.
ACCESS TO PUBLIC TRANSPORT
ON THE other side of the coin, public transport is creeping up in popularity. Official 2018 figures clocked a record 270 million journeys by tram or light rail, while the 1.71 billion National Rail journeys represents a 149% rise since 1985.
PROXIMITY TO GOOD SCHOOLS
SO often the reason for urban families moving to the suburbs or countryside, being near a good school ranked high for 29% of the people surveyed.
LOCAL JOB PROSPECTS
SOME people get a job and have to move, but others move and then have to get a job. We reckon this one speaks for itself: No job, no money for a nice house.
LAYOUT (19%)
OPEN-PLAN isn’t for everyone, while others find a labyrinthine network of rooms and corridors to be claustrophobic and constricting.