Last edited 31 Jan 2018

Which room is more likely to sell your home?

We are often told that bathrooms and kitchen are what sell a home, but an online study involving over 1,000 house hunters in the UK has revealed that buyers spend more time looking at the lounge than any other room. (Ref. HouseSimple.com.)

The study found that in a three-bedroom house, house hunters typically spend 1.5 times longer looking at the lounge – or living room – than the kitchen.

For one-bedroom properties, the lounge is just as important, but the next most attention-worthy room is the bedroom, rather than the kitchen.

Although not many one-bedroom properties have a dedicated dining room, buyers still spend more time looking at their dining area than the bathroom.

Perhaps the biggest surprise from the study was that no matter the size of the home, the outside area in a property – whether that’s a front garden, back garden or patio – is a generally bigger deal breaker than the bathroom.

Across all homes, buyers spent the most time on average looking at furniture features such as L-shaped sofas, coffee tables and workspaces.

Top five selling points in a three-bedroom house:

Living room
Kitchen
Master bedroom
Garden
Bathroom

Top five selling points in a one-bedroom flat:

Living room
Bedroom
Outside space
Kitchen
Dining area

Alex Gosling, CEO of HouseSimple.com, said:

“This study shows that the living room is the best place to start. When selling your home online, we recommend making this room the focal point of your listing, with plenty of photographs that reflect a warm, homely feel.

“We know that house hunters spend around 20 seconds looking at property listings with photographs. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s better than the two seconds they spend looking at ones without images.

“Listings with professional photographs also sell 50% faster and 39% closer to the asking price than listings without them, so it’s worth the extra time and effort to get them right.”