Home buyers have a picture of their ideal new home in their heads and imagine their home as a place they will spend time with family and friends. So it makes sense: if you want to attract buyers, you need to be online and stand out from the crowd. But it’s not as simple as filling your website with pictures of your beautiful homes and marketing to your researched, ideal demographic.  You have to know their top priorities; you have to know what home buyers want.

Our research into the attitudes and behaviors of potential new home buyers showed us there’s a lot more to attracting buyers than what they look like on paper, and what we think they want to see; you have to understand how they think and feel. Putting yourself in the shoes of the buyer and understanding what is most important to them, how they think and feel about the home buying process, will revolutionize how you sell homes online.

When we examined the priorities of home buyers in our research we discovered no matter which segment we looked at, there were three top priorities home buyers agreed on: Location, Cost, and Durability. In this article, we will explore the importance of location to homebuyers and what home builders can do to catch their attention.

Our research shows that location, location, location is everything. Across the board, this is most important. While buyers rank home cost as very important during the buying process, location is at the top of the list.
Two in three buyers say they do a lot of research before choosing a neighborhood to live in, and they have identified specific communities or neighborhoods they’re interested in. But location is much more than the neighborhoods you build in and misunderstanding that buyer priority can lead to lost opportunities.

Most (60%) home buyers are looking at options within a 50-mile radius of their current home, but that leaves 17% moving 50 or more miles away and 12% considering an out-of-state move. This means that buyers moving from more than 100 miles away will not be familiar with the area, and builders need to take that into account when creating content for their websites and their marketing.

If a builder is located in a medium-sized to large-sized metro it’s important to remember potential buyers from out of town are not familiar with the area.  When you are creating content and describing your communities on your website be sure to use language that is clear, versus local terminology.  For example, a buyer moving from out of state who is interested in “the East Coast of Florida from Palm Beach to Jupiter” may not recognize the phrase “Gold Coast Region of Florida” and not look any deeper into your homes or communities, thinking it is not their target area.  Websites need to provide a clear picture of where their homes are being built and that includes language as well as imagery.

And since most buyers care a lot about the community or neighborhood feel, you’ll need to include information, especially in visual/interactive formats, about what it’s like to live where you build. Consider making a video series that compares and contrasts different areas where you build. Include information about schools, parks, outdoor and indoor recreation, cultural offerings, restaurants, etc. Make it easy for prospective buyers to get a feel for what life will be like in their new home.