Deck the halls to the tune of £1.6 billion

Christmas is no longer just preparing for the arrival of Santa Claus, but friends and relatives too, according to Alliance & Leicester Mortgages’ movingimproving index.

Brits are spending a staggering £1.6 billion sprucing up their homes to prepare for the festive period, from buying new furniture to splashing out on luxury toilet roll, in order impress their guests.

The research shows that two thirds (65%) of Brits will be inviting friends and relatives to visit over Christmas and New Year. Of these, eight in ten (82%) will be revamping their home in preparation, spending an average of £145.15 each.

But it’s not just money that goes into making homes ship-shape to face the scrutiny of Brits’ nearest and dearest – it takes time too. Re-decorating the spare room, general tidying and putting up the Christmas tree means the nation will spend 70 million hours preparing for their guests to arrive.

Stephen Leonard, Director of Mortgages at Alliance & Leicester comments: “Christmas is a time for friends, family and general socialising, and we want our homes to look the best when entertaining guests. People want to feel house-proud and are putting in the time and effort to achieve house-perfection.”

Seven in ten people want to feel proud when showing guests round their house, although 14 percent will just use the impending visits as an excuse to do some decorating that needed doing anyway.

The top five tasks preparing for guests in the run-up to Christmas are:

Tidying the house (67%)
Buying luxury food/drink (47%)
Buying flowers (21%)
Painting/decorating the house (20%)
Buying new crockery/cutlery (8%)

Men are putting their hand deeper into their pockets than women, (£168 compared to £127), but would rather do that than make the effort, as women will spend an average of six hours and 48 minutes sprucing up the home, compared to five hours and 48 minutes spent by men.

Those in Yorkshire will spend eight and a half hours preparing for their visitors, compared to time-pressured Londoners, who will take less than five and a half hours. In contrast, those in the North East will splurge almost £200 on making their home the envy of the neighbourhood, whereas West Midlanders will fork out just half of that (£108) on their homes.

Stephen Leonard added:“Christmas may be an excuse to give our homes a face-lift, and hopefully this will help make this year’s festivities a real cracker. Not only could it help improve the setting for Christmas, it will also ensure that you enter 2007 in style, and make all the hard work worthwhile.”