Home is where the heart is

15 February 2007

Home is where the heart is

An allrealestate.co.nz survey has found that when it comes to matters of the heart, 88 percent of Kiwis look to the home, when assessing the suitability of a potential partner.

Aucklanders seek partners with a well maintained home (58%), Wellingtonians like their partners home to be clean and tidy (70%) and Cantabrians warm to those with a cosy and lived in home (50%).

The online survey of 200 respondents also found that the older we get the more discerning we become when choosing a partner.

Almost half of the older respondents aged 45+ said the actual suburb a prospective partner lives in would likely influence their decision to date. Sixty-six percent said they would prefer their partner to be living alone and to own their own home.

The twenty something’s were a lot more forgiving with 45 per cent being open to dating someone who lives in rented or share accommodation.

The younger generation are not so fussy either when it comes to living arrangements with a third of 18-24 year olds happy to date someone still living in their parents home.

Shaun Di Gregorio, general manager of allrealestate.co.nz said: “Choosing a partner is very much like buying a home.

“Many of the qualities people look for in a home resemble what one would assume are people’s immediate wants in a partner.”

From the north island to the south, more people are shaking up together with 65 per cent of people having lived with a partner by the time they are 30. Nearly a third of the couples have known each other less than six months, with majority moving out of rented accommodation to get on the housing ladder together.

According to Di Gregorio, there has been a rapid increase in the number of people seeking a rental accommodation.

“With house prices so high now, buying with a partner is often the only way to make a home purchase affordable and people are moving in together after only short periods of knowing one another in order to get on the property ladder.”

About allrealestate.co.nz allrealestate.co.nz has grown dramatically in the last year to become a one of the leading real estate website in New Zealand, with an 80 per cent growth in domestic visitors over the past 12 months and over 200,00 unique browsers to the site in January 2007. allrealestate.co.nz is owned and operated by realestate.com.au Ltd. (ASX:REA, and its subsidiary companies, The REA Group).

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