How Does a Home Buyer’s Narrative Affect the Home you're Selling? | Boca Raton Florida Real Estate and Southeast FL (2024)

Discovering common characteristics of homes purchased can certainly help you to better understand what a home Buyer may be looking for when they begin their home search. You will see that certain characteristics may be more suitable to a younger Millennial Buyer, whereas other characteristics may suit an older Baby Boomer Buyer, just right. We’re going to discover these differences by zeroing in on what they want in a neighborhood, by revealing the generational trends in these sometimes, eye-opening factors that will ultimately aid you in selling a home. It’s all about the neighborhood.

Investing a bit of time into knowing what to expect is always a perfect recipe for success; home selling success.

How you answer the questions below will shed some important light on just how your home and it’s neighborhood rates with home Buyers. This home buying narrative discussed will affect the timeline and price of a home you’re selling; two very important aspects of any home sale. How fast will you sell your home and at what price?

Do you have a single family home to sell?

If you’re selling a detached single family home you have over a 64% chance that your home is the preferred type home of all home Buyers, both young and old when compared with condos, townhouses, apartments and duplexes. Whereas, home Buyers aged 35-49 prefer a single family home by 85%! Did you think it would be that high?

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” – Ben Franklin

Where is your home located that you want to sell?

A home’s location is still a clear winner when it’s away from the city when we see home Buyers wanting to live in a nice subdivision located within the suburbs. In fact, by over 40% up to 60% across the various age groups. Can you guess what age group is most obsessed at 60% with the suburbs? It’s those aged 35 to 49, if that’s what you guessed. The younger Buyer 34 and younger, accounted for 49% of that group who are digging the suburbs. And it’s the older generation from 69 to 89 years of age who were least likely to want to live in the suburbs and found a smaller town or urban area to be more attractive to them.

How does your home’s neighborhood rate?

There are many factors that go into determining whether or not a neighborhood meets what Buyers are demanding. How your home meets those demands plays an integral part in Buyers choosing the home you have to sell. Let’s take a closer look at some of the top rated particulars of what it is that home Buyers want in a home.

Quality of the neighborhood

69% of all aged Buyers look at the quality of a neighborhood. In fact, the quality of a neighborhood is revealing to be the most important influence when choosing a neighborhood to live in. If the Buyer is a younger Millennial (34 or younger), it’s importance shoots up to 75%.

How would you rate the quality of the neighborhood that you’re selling? What is special about your neighborhood; does it have any social status or any distinguishing features or benefits? The more attributes the better the perceived quality.

Convenient to job

We live in the age of convenience. We want everything to be fast and at our fingertips it seems, nowadays. Just like the sign in the store that advertises “ears pierced while you wait” – gosh, I would think so, yet here they’re trying to appeal to the individual who has to have it now, right this minute! We all know there isn’t an alternative however, as you just can’t drop off your ears to be pierced!

Being closer to one’s job ranks to be important to 52% of all aged Buyers and again this job convenience ranks high with the younger generation, aged 34 and younger; a 74% level of importance. As you can imagine, this job location importance decreases as you get into the older population, whereas the working years left in one’s life is shortening or to the retiree population. However, as you’ll find out as you continue reading below, there are other conveniences that the older/retiree population welcome that you may benefit from if those employers are ideally located near your home. Understand that if your home isn’t necessarily convenient to a job, that you won’t be able to fetch top dollar as those home Sellers who do offer the job location convenience.

Is your home located close to major highways for easy commuting or maybe it’s located nearby to some of the top employers in the area. All pluses if you can say “yes”.

Overall affordability of homes

Affordability is important to 47% of all Buyers and even higher for the younger Buyer 34 and younger where they put it at 58%. Remember these younger Buyers are probably just getting started and may not be even set into their chosen career paths, thus not earning their full wage potential. They’re watching their P’s and Q’s. In addition, they’re likely seeing the past financial mistakes that other generations have made and want no part in that – thank goodness for that! When you get to the older age brackets aged 35-68 this drops to 43%, which is due to likely having more purchasing power and discretionary income.

How affordable is the home you want to sell? Is it at a popular price point of the mid $300,000 to $399,999 as is here in many Southeast Florida cities such as Coral Springs and Boca Raton? When your home is not within a typical affordable price range, you can anticipate not having such a demand, which can ultimately affect the time period in which your home will sell.

Convenient to friends/family

As a home Seller, you’d have no idea of how to accommodate for this factor. This is a pretty important factor however, where 43% of all home Buyers consider this and even more, aged 69 to 89 coming in at 52%! Just hope that your home is located near a home Buyer’s best friend or close relative! Or perhaps you could market your home as having some of the best neighbors around for those looking for new friends! I’ll have to remember that for the next home I’m marketing for my customers.

Convenient to shopping

Popular shopping plazas and malls can definitely be a draw. Even with the increase of online shopping particularly more prevalent with the younger Millennials, you’ll find about 37% of Baby Boomers between 50-69 years of age to 42% of older individuals, 69 – 89, finding more value in having shopping nearby. This is one factor where the younger generation (34 and younger) has dropped off it’s pressing need of this when just 25% of them rate this as important. The slightly older Generation X aged 35-49 put it at 29% of importance.

How close to shopping is your home that you want to sell? You can likely benefit if your home is located nearby shopping, yet it won’t be as critical with the young Millennials.

Quality of school district

As you can imagine, a quality school district will be more critical with young families as the statistics show with young Millennials and Gen Xers, coming it at the mid 40% range. The appeal to the older generations drop to single digits as their children are likely grown and beyond school age at this point in their lives.

Having a home to sell that is located within a high quality school district will undoubtedly bring you in a higher sale price for your home than those homes located in neighborhoods with failing schools.

Design of neighborhood

Aesthetic appeal of a neighborhood is very similar to the individual curb appeal of a home. How a neighborhood is laid out and how it is cared for can often be an important consideration for many home Buyers. In fact, some 28% of Buyers find this to be a trait they’re considering. This seems to be pretty constant across the board for all age groups.

What type of neighborhood do you live in? Is it well cared for? Is it a secure gated community? Is there a Homeowners Association that has strict guidelines for maintaining its aesthetic appeal? How functional is it in contributing to day to day living? How visually interesting is it? Does it encourage contact with your neighbors? How memorable is its appeal? These are all contributing factors to a successful design of any neighborhood. The more of these questions that you can answer as being part of your neighborhood, you likely have a well designed neighborhood that will be appealing to many a home Buyer.

Convenient to entertainment/ leisure activities

Another characteristic that seems to have broad appeal across all age groups, is where 25% of all home Buyers seek out convenience to entertainment and leisure activities. Their lives are not all work and no play. We all need some time for a bit of fun and leisure. Favorite restaurants, both casual and fine dining. Bars, pubs and nightlife entertainment.

Nearby entertainment and leisure activities to choose from will help you when you have a home to sell. Do many come to mind when you think of what is nearby your home? Whether it’s a well known mom and pop shop, an established chain or operated by a Chef extraordinaire, it can be a draw when agreeing to settle in the area of your home.

Convenient to parks/recreational facilities

Thank goodness this is an attraction to 23% of home Buyers as a sedentary lifestyle is never good for our health. Whether it’s going; on a walk, a run, to a baseball, football or soccer game, to doggie parks, along bicycle paths, to playgrounds, to play at golf courses, to skating rinks, to swim at aquatic centers, to fishing piers, to splash at a community pool, to tennis courts, to basketball courts, and the like, Buyers often like the option of being located nearby parks and recreational facilities.

If you can say your home is nearby such parks and recreations, imagine the appeal to prospective home Buyers.

Other additional neighborhood factors

Some additional factors influencing a home Buyer’s choice are shown below, yet not quite as important as the others cited above. However, one that stands out to comment on, would be those Buyers desiring the convenience of nearby health facilities, which appeals to 28% of those aged 60-68 and those aged 69-89 find it even more important at 38% which you can likely imagine as we do advance in age. The additions are noted below:

Availability of larger lots or acreage

Convenient to health facilities

Home in a planned community

Convenient to public transportation

Convenient to airport

More Ways on how to appeal to types of Buyers

Wrap up

If you can say that your home’s neighborhood is of high quality, close to employers, affordable, close to prospective Buyer’s family/friends, close to shopping, high quality schools, appealing neighborhood design, close to entertainment & leisure activities, close to parks/recreation, larger lot availability, close to health care, in a planned community, convenient to public transportation and airports, then you will likely rise to the top as your home sticks out from the competition. You’ll find that you’ll have a better opportunity to sell a home for top dollar and relatively fast when you’ve presented your well-priced home, in its best light. If the home you have for sale doesn’t rate in meeting all of these neighborhood characteristics than work with your Real Estate Agent to best position your home for sale, so you’re not a statistic of those homeowners whose home didn’t sell, but rather expired.

Additional Featured Real Estate articles included below from noted Real Estate Bloggers that are from a Buyer’s perspective to further help you as a home Seller:

Searching for a neighborhood by Bill Gassett

What to consider in a neighborhood by Anita Clark

Finding the best neighborhood by Debbie Drummond

Tips to choosing a neighborhood by Kyle Hisco*ck

Today’s article “How Does a Home Buyer’s Narrative Affect the Home you’re Selling?” written by Lynn Pineda. You’ll find Lynn selling homes in Southeast Florida in the cities of Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, Coral Springs, Delray Beach, Coconut Creek, Deerfield Beach, Margate, Parkland, Pompano Beach, Tamarac, Sunrise, Plantation and Ft Lauderdale areas within Broward and Palm Beach counties. Call Lynn now to discover more about a home Buyer’s narrative.

Lynn Pineda, a licensed Southeast Florida Real Estate Agent serving Southeast Florida since 2005. eXp Realty Boca Raton Florida. Real Estate Promises Delivered. You can speak with Lynn by calling/texting her at 954-464-1100 or you can email her at: LynnP@ImagineYourHouse.com if you need to buy or sell a Southeast Florida home. Your local, trusted professional when it’s time to buy or sell a home. Real Estate promises delivered.

Source: National Association of REALTORSⓇ Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report 2015