New home owners in South West spend £5,400 making their house a home

Home owners in the south west spend an average of £5,400 to make their house feel like a home according to research from Barratt Homes.

Almost half of recent buyers installed a new kitchen, upgraded the bathroom, or altered the layout as part of the process to make a home their own.

With these stamps of personalisation often requiring building, decoration or settling in time, 27% only felt at home after 50 days.

Decorating to personal tastes also plays a big part in helping people settle in, with the lounge being the priority room to personalise by 50% followed by the bedroom cited by 21%.

This all comes at a cost with 14% of people who recently bought a home spending more than £10,000 to turn the property into somewhere they can comfortably call their home.

Moving in milestones

Key moments that help make a house feel like a home:

1. Putting up photos (30%)
2. When the house feels lived in by the whole family (20%)
3. When a letter arrives with their new address on (13%)
4. Once they’ve hosted their first Christmas (13%)
5. Familiar smells (12%)

How to fast-track making a house a home

After the stresses and strains of moving home, Barratt Homes shares its top tips on how to fast-track the process of making a new property feel homely:

1. Surround yourself with personal belongings that mean something significant to you – it’s important to have old memories in your new home
2. Establish family rituals such as Saturday night film night complete with popcorn and treats
3. Consider a new build home, the clean blank canvas can fast-track making it feel like home and eliminate expensive DIY or home improvement jobs as everything is already new
4. Spend as much time as possible in your home, become accustomed to its quirks, sounds, smells and how it feels
5. Invite friends and family over - bring fun and familiar people into your new surroundings to begin creating new memories

Kate Fox, Social Issues Research Centre, commented, “Making a property feel like a home is really important to establish an emotional connection with your house or flat, and it’s a shame to see that this is an expensive and timely process for many recent home owners – making what should be an exciting and special time much more stressful. Prospective buyers should ensure they have considered this aspect before choosing the type of property they want to move into."

Lee Monk from Barratt Homes said, “The research highlights that making a house a home can be a costly and time consuming process for many home owners.’’

He said it was particularly interesting to see that almost half of recent home buyers are making alterations to the layout and refurbishing old kitchens and bathrooms.

“For those who are keen to avoid this it is certainly worth considering a new build, which eliminates this obstacle and ensures you don’t have to spend a large additional chunk of money on top of purchase price. In addition, new builds provide new owners with a blank canvas they can personalise as they like, helping to make it feel like home from the offset,’’ said Lee.

For more information, tips and hints to help navigate the house buying process, visit barratthomes.co.uk/hometruths.