US home buyers favor communities with convenience, walkability, and suburban feel with top preferences including proximity to retail spaces, public parks, and walking trails; most prefer a suburban location within 11.3 miles of their workplace: NAHB

NAHB’s latest study on consumer preferences—What Home Buyers Really Want Study*— asked about the features and amenities buyers want in the home, but also about the type of community where they would like to live.  The question is important because the home that successfully appeals to buyers doesn’t exist in a vacuum—it sits inside a community they evaluate as thoroughly as the home itself.

Our findings reveal that the ideal community offers three main attributes: convenience, walkability, and a suburban feel.  This conclusion is gleaned from the top five features buyers most want in a community, which are being close to retail space (e.g., pharmacy, grocery store) (70%), near a park area (66%), walking/jogging trails (66%), a walkable community (pathways connecting homes to transportation, shopping, etc.) (65%), and a typically suburban community (64%).

In terms of the overall location where buyers would prefer to purchase a home, 53% would like to buy in the suburbs (either close-in or outlying), a rural area (25%), or the central city (downtown or outside of it) (23%).  The study also asked buyers about the farthest distance they are willing to travel one-way from home to work.  For the typical buyer, that sweet spot is 11.3 miles—which is not surprising given that most report a desire to live in the suburbs.

What Home Buyers Really Want, 2024 Edition sheds light on the housing preferences of the typical home buyer and is based on a national survey of more than 3,000 recent and prospective home buyers.  Because of the inherent diversity in buyer backgrounds, the study provides granular specificity based on demographic factors such as generation, geographic location, race/ethnicity, income, and price point.