With average house prices increasing and people investing more time searching for their perfect home, Strata has investigated the most common questions first-time buyers are faced with.
As part of the research, Strata used Google search data to identify some of the most commonly searched for phrases from first-time buyers.
Terms such as ‘first-time home buyer’ receive 9,900 average monthly searches while functional queries such as ‘How to get a mortgage?’ receive 5,400, closely followed by ‘How to buy a house?’ with around 3,600 on average.
To further delve into the minds of first-time buyers, Strata scoured the web to uncover the top discussions over the last 12 months and to find the most pressing questions first-time buyers had to ask.
Over 325,000 first-timers are expecting Google to assess their personal circumstances and give them a bespoke answer, searching ‘How much can I borrow?’ whilst 64,800 are mostly concerned with how to get their first mortgage.
Surprisingly, almost 35,000 buyers on the hunt for their first home have no idea what a mortgage is.
The top 10 questions asked
| Keyword | Average searches over 12 months |
| how much can I borrow | 325,200 |
| how to get a mortgage | 64,800 |
| how to buy a house | 43,200 |
| what is a mortgage | 34,800 |
| how long does it take to buy a house | 15,600 |
| what is help to buy | 10,560 |
| how to save for a house | 7,080 |
| how much are solicitors fees for buying a house | 4,680 |
| what is a homebuyers survey | 2,040 |
| how much is the stamp duty | 1,680 |
Gemma Smith at Strata said: “Most first-time buyers have an endless supply of questions and are entering into a minefield of unknowns with vast numbers of people anonymously seeking answers to their home-buying questions on Google.
“In fact, these figures prove that many first time buyers are not aware of the help that is available to them, whether that is an independent mortgage advisor, an estate agent or a new homes manager. For those on the hunt for their first home it’s definitely worth reading about the benefits of Help to Buy.”
The research also revealed that Google Trend Data shows a year on year increase in people searching for new build homes across the UK with 3% year on year growth in this search term showing that reliance on homebuilders to deliver trusted guidance and recommendations is growing.
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