Current Demands to Make your Home More Desirable

If you're considering selling your home in the near future and need to do some upgrades and/or improvements, it's important to know current demands to make your home more desirable. According to a new Ipsos Reid poll, Canadian homeowners have indicated a wish list, highlighting some of the things they’d like to have in their ideal home. The following are some of the things on the wish list:

• Most (93%) ‘agree’ (57% strongly/36% somewhat) that they’d like the production of heat in their home to be more cost efficient.
• Nine in ten (92%) ‘agree’ (53% strongly/39% somewhat) that they’d like the production of heat in their home to be more energy efficient.
• Nine in ten (90%) of those with this problem ‘agree’ (46% strongly/43% somewhat) that they wish they could have a constant temperature in their home, and not some areas that are hotter or colder than others.
• Eight in ten (83%) ‘agree’ (31% strongly/52% somewhat) that they wish the air in their home could be cleaner.
• Three quarters (72%) of those with bulkheads ‘agree’ (25% strongly/47% somewhat) that they wish there were not bulkheads in their basement so their ceiling wouldn’t seem so low.
• Seven in ten (70%) ‘agree’ (28% strongly/42% somewhat) that they’d love to have heated floors in their home.
• A majority (53%) ‘agrees’ (20% strongly/34% somewhat) that they wish their duct work didn’t get in the way of where they could put furniture.

The type of heating in the home can have a significant impact on air quality. One in three (34%) homeowners say that someone in their household suffers from allergies due to dust or other air-born allergens, and a quarter (24%) say that someone who regularly visits their house (a friend or relative) suffers from allergies due to dust or other air-born allergies. Couple these statistics with the fact that a majority (56%) of homeowners report having a pet, and it’s not surprising that seven in ten (71%) of those who have an allergy sufferer in their home believe that the air circulation system in their home contributes to those allergies (26% a great deal/45% somewhat). Most (83%) homeowners ‘agree’ (31% strongly/52% somewhat) that they wish the air in their home could be cleaner.

Many obstacles appear to get in the way of achieving some of these ideal goals. Three quarters (72%) of homeowners say that some areas of their home are hotter or colder than others, while four in ten (41%) note that they have bulkheads or duct-work in their basement that makes the room smaller, or makes their ceiling lower.

When building or renovating a home, four in ten (39%) homeowners believe that things like having areas of the house that are colder or hotter than others gets in the way of achieving an ideal living space, while a similar proportion says the same about duct work and bulkheads that make the room an odd shape and decrease the amount of useful space (35%). Three in ten (30%) are frustrated by air vents located in odd places, while just four in ten (38%) say that none of these things gets in the way of achieving an ideal living space.

Ipsos Reid poll conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of Beautiful Heat from September 19-26, 2011. For this survey, a national sample of 1,003 homeowners from Ipsos' Canadian online panel was interviewed online.