54pc of luxury home hunters deem chef’s kitchen most important feature: report

28/04/2014
A new report from Realtor.com explores the motivations and interests of consumers on the market for a luxury home.
Thirteen percent of respondents said that they are looking for a high-end luxury home and 26 percent said that they might be considering such a purchase. Twenty percent of consumers looking for a luxury home cite a lack of options as the main obstacle in their search, which aligns with other reports that detail how demand is ahead of supply in many markets.

“We were definitely most surprised by the high number of survey participants who fell into the luxury marketplace,” said Leslie Piper, consumer housing specialist at Realtor.com, San Francisco.
“With 39 percent of respondents either definitely looking for luxury, or at least considering it, this means today’s sellers really need to make every effort to appeal to a high-end buyer,” she said.
“Agencies should really be working to coach their sellers through the front-end upgrades necessary to respond to these luxury buyer priorities. Whether updating the home’s kitchen to include chef-worthy appliances, trimming back landscapes to maximize view corridors, or closing in those partially enclosed spaces to gain usable square footage, realtors should be making sure to prioritize these facets that are prioritized by this large consumer segment.”
Realtor.com surveyed more than 1,500 visitors to its Web site from March 17 to April 2.
Suite views
The most common motivations among respondents for getting into the luxury home market were a career change, recent retirement and for a sound an investment.
Barriers standing in the way of consumers include houses that fail to meet family needs, lack of properties offered, too many ultra-unique properties and hard-to-come by mortgage loans.
Features that appeal to consumers include a chef’s kitchen, views of oceans, mountains or cityscapes, square footage and an opulent master suite.
Thirty-five percent of consumers said that resale value is very important, while 29 percent said that it is neither important or unimportant.
Among all respondents, markets where $1 million and higher price points were popular include the Northeast, Pacific and Mountain Valley. In South Central, North Central and South Atlantic, consumers felt that $500,000 was a reasonable starting point.
All around
The luxury real estate market has been performing exceptionally the past few years.
London and New York were the highest-performing luxury markets in 2013 in the latest Christie’s International Real Estate report.
The “Luxury Defined: An Insight Into The Luxury Residential Property Market” report examines the trends shaping the luxury real estate market and extrapolates on the performance of 10 high-performing locations. The growth in the luxury sector has been driven on three fronts by locals, foreign investors and millennials, and most buyers have been turning their sights to cities (see story).
While the pent-up demand means that consumers will be less discerning, agencies should still be keeping abreast of the latest preference trends.
“Agencies can also use these most popular priority areas and key amenity considerations to help clarify with their luxury home buyer clients where their priorities shake out in this list as well,” Ms. Piper said.

Fonte: luxurydaily.com

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