Survey on Decision Criteria of Buyers of Residential Buildings

Although there are several speculations on factors that might be important for the buying decision of private customers when buying a residential building, purchasers of privately owned buildings have not been asked about those factors so far.Therefore, a survey in the rural parts of Hesse (Germany) has been started in which every purchaser of a residential building gets a questionnaire. They are asked which pieces of information on their property, e.g. reference prices, building license, copy of an entry in the cadastral register etc., they had when buying their piece of real estate. Furthermore, there are questions on the impact of several factors on their buying decision like e.g. purchasing price, connection to local trains and buses, living close to schools and shops.The intention of the study is to figure out which information buyers have about their future land property and which factors are important for their buying decision. Moreover, statistical methods will be used to check whether there is a relationship between the known pieces of information or the important factors for the buying decision and the age of the purchasers, their educational background or the size of the district where the property belongs to.Finally, the results will be compared to the findings of other studies.