Mother’s Day is this Sunday, and in a year full of homebuying buzz, many moms may be reflecting on their own home purchase.
As it turns out, a lot of moms have been left unsatisfied with their home — more than 1 in 4 wish they had purchased a different home, according to a new study by LendingTree. Moms are also nearly twice as likely to experience homebuyer’s remorse than dads, only 14 percent of which experience those same feelings of regret toward their home.
For this report, LendingTree commissioned an online survey through experience management firm Qualtrics of 1,006 parents with kids aged 18 or younger. The survey ran from April 8 through April 15, 2021.
As the market continues to go strong, LendingTree’s study found that a whopping 64 percent of parents are considering selling their home in order to try and find the dream home they may have missed before.
Most parents wish they had a larger kitchen, at 23 percent of survey respondents. After that, the things parents most wanted to change was their amount of outdoor space (14 percent) and their home’s location (11 percent), all somewhat predictable factors given the pandemic’s impact on how people live and have come to see their homes more as a sanctuary.
Broken down by gender, dads showed a stronger preference for a larger kitchen (26 percent of dads compared to 17 percent of moms), while moms showed a greater desire to change the overall layout of their home (13 percent of moms compared to 7 percent of dads).
More than 1 in 5 parents reported that they feel frustrated about their home on a daily basis, adding stress to their lives. In total, 64 percent of parents said their lives would be less stressful if they could eliminate the pain points of their home. More dads felt their home’s pain points weighing on them at 72 percent, while just 54 percent of moms said removing their home’s pain points would reduce their stress.
A sizable portion of parents have called in the professionals for their home, with 42 percent reporting they’ve used designers or professional organizers. Another 25 percent of parents stated that they would like to use these kinds of professional services to help with their home’s pain points.
Staying at home for most of the year has resulted in parents increasing their spending on home decor too — 51 percent of parent homeowners said they spent more money than usual on home decor within the last year. For 35 percent of parents, those costs added up to at least $1,000.
When it comes to sharing the true cost of those home decor expenses, dad was guilty more often than mom: 79 percent of dads said they’ve purchased home items and hid their true cost, while 50 percent of moms did the same.
Update: An earlier version of this story misstated that moms hid the true cost of home improvements more often than dads.
