Design and Marketing Tips for Selling Homes in a High-Rate Environment

In July 2022, 85% of prospective new-home buyers surveyed by John Burns Real Estate Consulting’s New Home Trends Institute said they wouldn’t buy a home if mortgage rates exceeded 6%. As it turned out, mortgage rates proceeded to climb, peaking at 7.375% on Oct. 20, 2022. And, while that upward trend has eased, rates continue to fluctuate and remain in the low 6% rate range in February 2023.

To increase homebuyer demand, the New Home Trends Institute offers a range of design and marketing tips on what home builders should keep, start, and stop doing in the new homes they build:

Keep: Strategically shrinking square footage to get costs down. To balance affordability with demand for greater function within the home, designers are thoughtfully “right sizing” rooms and spaces to ensure that all needs are met. Interior spaces that square footage is most often reallocated from include:

• Offices – A bedroom-sized home office is no longer the norm, with an increasing number of designers including pocket-sized office spaces. Homeowners and single-family renters support this tradeoff, with up to 86% of Young Families preferring to downsize the office and use the remaining space elsewhere in the home.
• Kitchens – Two separate panels at our 2022 New Home Trends Summit suggested kitchen islands with seating in lieu of a separate breakfast nook. …

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