What makes buyers comfortable?

This Issue This is a part of the Building better feature

By - , Build 179

People want comfortable homes. At the same time, they also want to be listened to and feel what they are being sold genuinely meets their needs, not just to be told that it does.

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APPARENTLY, people do not care about how comfortable their homes are. According to industry, they are unable to sell high-performance dwellings because people would rather spend their money on a good-looking kitchen than on a good design that makes the home warm and dry.

Unsurprisingly, the current situation has a big impact on people’s health and quality of life. Should we tell them this? Should we convince them to favour comfort over less-relevant things? I think not, and I explain why.

It is not about the evidence

I often hear that new evidence might change people’s minds. By showing them enough scientific evidence of the benefits, we might be able to convince people to favour comfortable homes over good-looking ones.

For my doctoral research, I asked people from New Zealand and Chile to describe a warm dwelling and a dwelling with good natural light. Their responses clearly showed these features are important for them. Participants stated ‘there is nothing nicer than using the natural light’, that ‘daylight is good for your body and your soul’ and that warmth ‘gives you a surplus of wellbeing that you appreciate’. The truth is that people’s attitudes towards comfortable homes are aligned with what we want them to be.

Showing people new scientific evidence linking exposure to daylight with our circadian rhythms and physiological health will not be enough for them to change their preferences – they have always wanted homes with good daylight.

Lack of reliable information

So why aren’t people looking for comfortable homes? My research suggests there are two reasons:

  • They cannot be certain of how comfortable a dwelling is before purchasing and living in it.
  • Professionals within industry are not considered a reliable source for information.

Due to a lack of reliable information, people cannot express their housing preferences through their purchase decisions. Therefore, changing people’s behaviour is not simply about giving them more information but understanding that they require reliable information to make an informed choice.

Need reliable and relatable information

Information is a valuable resource to those searching for a new home. It helps people shape their preferences and make and justify their choices. However, people do not treat all information in the same way. For instance, claims about comfort are not hard to verify because it is subjective but because it is difficult to predict.

While houses are a key determinant of health, the health impact of poor housing is significant, as BRANZ research has found in the House Condition Survey (see www.branz.co.nz/hcs). Unhealthy homes can be cosmetically addressed during the selling process by, for example, cleaning mould.

What would be a reliable source of information about comfort? My research – as well as the economic literature – suggests that it should be a trusted and unrelated third party that cannot make any economic gain from misinformation. Organisations such as the Sustainability Trust do this by providing advice on energy efficiency and how to create a warm, dry, healthy home at little or no expense.

However, my research also suggests initiatives such as energy performance certificates that disclose a building’s energy consumption or environmental impact will not be able to change people’s behaviour unless they directly respond to people’s doubts, concerns and desires. Any information provided must be valuable from the perspective of the person that will use the building – the occupant or potential occupant.

The value of our information

The way to change people’s behaviour is to empower them, allowing them to choose the comfortable dwellings they already want. This can be achieved by asking the unrelated third party to certify the level of comfort of a dwelling. However, what kind of information should the third party provide? Unfortunately, arguing that a home is certified to be warm or to have good daylight is not enough.

When visiting a property, people will contrast the information offered with their intuitive judgements. Showing a certificate of comfort or good daylight will be of little use if the property being sold has very few windows or if these are obstructed or if they do not face the sun. Some of my interviewees told me they carried a compass.

If we want to sell comfortable dwellings, their design needs to resolve all doubts that people might have. We can only do this by listening to them.

Similarly, people know that improving certain areas of comfort or daylight may affect others. For instance, if excessively big windows are installed to help improve daylight, people may be concerned about their privacy, the risk of overheating, the maintenance of the windows and potential leaks and drafts. Also, openable windows could help solve the overheating issue, but they can let in noise, pollution and insects. Comfort is never considered in isolation, and we need to listen to people to understand their concerns.

Finally, people might ask about the meaning of an energy performance certificate. If the indicators do not reflect people’s understanding of comfort, the information is unlikely to have any effect. Unfortunately, definitions of comfort centred on the minimisation of physiological efforts are too simplistic to be relatable. People do not simply want to feel thermally neutral and avoid glare. They do not even want to save money and energy.

Listening to what people want

People want to feel healthy and well and be confident that their children will also be well. They want to be able to live their lives without their home influencing their decisions of what to wear or what to cook. They want to be sure that their home is not just temporarily comfortable but that it will also be comfortable in the future.

We must listen to people to understand their desires.

Design and information must cohere

Since people already want comfortable homes, trying to convince them about the benefits of comfort changes nothing. They need empowerment and reliable and meaningful information that helps them choose those homes they already want. Is this possible?

People are not likely to trust information coming from anyone who has an incentive to exaggerate the comfort attributes of dwellings. However, sorting that out is just the beginning. It is crucial to maintain coherence between the design of the dwelling and the information we provide.

If a warm house does not look warm, people might not trust the information. Likewise, comfort is just one more attribute involved in housing choice. For example, if a property has big windows – and lots of daylight – it may be rejected because of privacy or overheating issues.

Ultimately, if we want people to be interested in a property, we must be able to explain what our information means in terms they can relate to. None of these things is possible if we do not listen.

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