The other day I was contacted by a website called SellingUp. They are an online estate agent comparison website. They emailed me to say that they had some content that they thought might be worth featuring on DGB. Usually when I get these kinds of emails it’s a very poor attempt at adding links back to the sender’s website, along with some poorly written content. So I normally ignore them.

Not this time. SellingUp had contacted me to say that they had got together with leading market research firm Populus, to carry out a study asking 2000 people what features they would like in their dream home, or what they couldn’t live without. I took a look. You’ll be surprised at the results.

Question and answer

This was the question SellingUp and Populus posed to 2000 people:

Imagine you were looking for a dream house to buy and money and space were no object. Would each of the following special features make a property more desirable to you as a buyer, less desirable or make no difference?

Here are the answers that those 2000 people gave:

fantasy_features_table1

And here’s me thinking a bar should be at the top of the list!

That’s right, according to the people surveyed, 89% said double glazing was most desirable, with conservatories coming in a solid second at 70%. Lets be honest, before this poll, if our industry was asked to predict what the public would have said, I reckon we’d have had double glazing and conservatories nearer the middle of this list, if not nearer the bottom. So for them to come in first and second place is quite a surprise. To me it is anyway.

Check out the full report on SellingUp

Should we be surprised though? I think we tend to think less of ourselves in the public domain. Perhaps because of the patchy negative reputation our industry has had for so long. But to see our industry top a list like this is very good news. And I think it’s the work we’ve done over the past decade to turn that reputation around that is paying dividends.

DGB Features

Hard work paying off

For me, this survey is a reflection of the hard work our industry has undertaken over the past few years to show home owners that our industry isn’t the cowboy outfit it was accused of being in the 80’s and 90’s.

We’re a much evolved industry. Our products are now of a much higher quality, with the biggest range of choice, styles and customisation we’ve ever had. This translates into windows and doors becoming a much more desirable products for home owners. This survey proves that the days of window and door purchasing being an uninteresting, depressing minefield of cowboy outfits and mediocre products are now behind us.

This is a poll and a set of results our industry should look to make the most of. This is some great PR for the sector and will help shine a positive light on what we do and the evolved products we now sell and install.

One other note I’d like to make is the demographics of those who said that double glazing and conservatories are at the top of their lists:

 

There was a very healthy spread of people across all age brackets that said double glazing and conservatories would be the most desirable features in their dream home. This is more important than you might think. Despite the younger generation, who are perhaps only still in their first homes or looking to buy their first home, they still consider new double glazing as a top priority. They might not be all flush with cash to spend on new windows and doors, but they might be a future purchase target. Good for us. Even better if the bank of mum and dad can help them out with it too.

It’s nice to see our industry’s topping a list for the right reasons. There’s not enough positive press or PR out there about our sector, which really is making massive strides forward every year. This survey confirms to me that windows and doors are now a high-end purchase, alongside kitchens, cars and holidays.

I want to thank www.sellingup.com for getting in touch and allowing me to use their facts and figures on here. You can click here to read the full report on all the above product groups. It makes for some interesting reading, and might make you rethink what we all think home owners consider a priority.

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