Higher House Prices Don't Buy Happiness, Gartoo Study Suggests

    LONDON, ENGLAND, September 17, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The report, published on the Gartoo property blog, shows little correlation between price tag and happiness, with the majority of respondents saying that the people in a house are the biggest factor in their level of happiness. But the study, which questioned over 500 people in the UK, also highlighted some key gender differences in attitudes towards housing.

Of the 46.48% who said that the people they live with are what makes them happy, more were women. On the other hand, male respondents were more likely to say that factors such as location, design and the social aspects of living in the house were more important.

Age differences were also highlighted, with the study showing that as people get older, they become less concerned with how a house looks, and more concerned with its location and safety.

"Location, price and design are less important than living happily with other dwellers of one's home. Estate agents need to think about the different expectations of men and women. Understanding that the features of the property need to satisfy all its future dwellers may result in quicker and simpler transactions," said Ruben Martinez, Marketing Director of Lokku Ltd.

Interestingly, there was also a North/South divide, with those in the north of England more interested in the safety of a house and the people in it, while those in the south of England were more interested in its location, design and what they do in it.

About Gartoo
Gartoo is an initiative by Lokku Labs, a platform of Lokku Limited. Gartoo was originally developed as an experimental website to allow home hunters to perform very specific queries to a database of properties. Lokku Labs is testing full text search and many other techniques on Gartoo. On a technical level the company uses Sphinx, the free open- source SQL full- text search engine and lots of Perl coding. The aim is to turn Gartoo into a test bed of ideas to apply to other projects of Lokku Limited.

For more information see: http://www.gartoo.co.uk.

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