Home Truths: Top Three Reasons For Why People Buy Residential Real Estate

Traditionally, research into behavioural real estate has taken a quantitative, deductive approach. This is primarily because real estate has had a financial and economic heritage while consumer research has had its roots in economics and psychology. The insights from this type of research are limited in nature, as they only provide a snapshot description of consumer behaviour. Additionally, the focus on quantitative methodologies has limited research on housing choices in that it has tended to consider only the utilitarian aspects of consumption. The growing anthropological and sociological based qualitative and interpretive methodologies have facilitated consumer research to include such areas as that of behavioural real estate. This interpretive study sought to identify and understand the motives that underlie actual home choices rather than to impose those from the literature. Thus, a humanistic perspective is taken and a naturalistic inquiry is adopted in this research. Through a method known as ZMET (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique), an understanding of the factors that are important in determining home choice is gained directly from home buyers. This paper focuses on Step Eight of the ZMET interview process where respondents have created mental maps using constructs that have been elicited throughout the interview. It identifies twenty key motives underlying home choices, presents three of these motives in detail and discusses their implications for academics and practitioners. It then concludes with a contribution to existing housing choice literature ñ that consumersí choice for a home can be driven by non-economic, non-calculative and non-tangible factors.