It's not just the economic and social conditions that influence home buying decisions; your personality has an upper hand too.
The Wall Street Journal cites a new study by the Tel Aviv University that proves how personality affects decisions of whether or not to take the property plunge.
For the study, the researchers asked 1,138 participants to take a personality test where they had to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 on Conscientiousness (organized and efficient), Openness (creative), Neuroticism (moody and tense), Extroversion (energetic and sociable) and Agreeableness (undemanding, agreeable).
These respondents were then asked to answer five real-estate based questions like the duration and type of mortgage they preferred, if they would rather rent or buy and if they would rather invest in real estate or stocks.
They matched the personality types to the real estate questions and found the people who score above average on:
- Conscientiousness - prefferd fixed mortgage rates
- Openness - preferred lower loan-to-value mortgages
- Neuroticism - Prefferd to own a home or buy rather than to rent
- Extroversion/Agreeableness - Would rather invest in real estate than in stocks.
To confirm the results, the researchers compared the results to the data of a larger sample - about 1.6 million people - sourced from the U.S. Census Bureau. The housing data was taken from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They found that the results coincided.
For example, in states that had a higher neurotic score (New York), people preferred lower loan-to-value ratios. In South Carolina, people chose fixed mortgage rates more and in Tennessee, people preferred homeownership over renting.
But the researchers noted that this is not the ultimate guide to real estate and personality, adding that individuality plays a more important role when it comes to property decisions, the Journal reports.
Of late, several researches have been linking housing/real estate to health and personality.
A recent study shed some light on how living near a foreclosed property could add to blood pressure problems. Another study also showed how spending on housing could affect a child's emotional and cognitive abilities.
There was this study that proved how children influenced property decisions of parents. A Gallup research also highlighted a trend of how Americans preferred investing in real estate rather than in gold or stocks.
