10 must-have features buyers look for when searching for a home

Selling a home can be stressful no matter the price bracket or the neighborhood. Additionally, the pandemic has added more complications to the current housing market in America, even as the Federal Reserve made a concerted effort to limit the economic damage of the world shutting down for such a long period of time.

The average interest rates for a 30-year fixed mortgage jumped considerably in the past four months alone, rocketing to 5.37% in April 2022 from 3.1% in December of 2021. The average cost to buy a home rose to nearly $400,000 from $320,250 according to the U.S Census Bureau, yet bidding wars between prospective buyers still seem unabated. With some predicting that inflation will become an even bigger factor for rising home costs, the stressors that surround home sales have reached fever pitch.

Whether you’re an everyday American with a modest cottage in a quaint little town or you’re Meryl Streep selling your four-bedroom, five-bathroom luxury townhouse in Tribeca, there are specific features homebuyers are always looking for in property, no matter their tax bracket. Real estate platform ZeroDown analyzed its proprietary data, last updated April 7, 2022, to determine the 10 most common features that homebuyers list as must-haves when searching for home listings.

All features are divided into four categories based on how important they are to people searching for a home: must have, can have, occasionally, and never. This dataset features a sample size of 10,000 people who browsed ZeroDown’s real estate search engine, and each feature is ranked by the percentage of respondents who listed the feature as a must-have. Respondents were allowed to choose multiple features when searching.