Key to happiness: be a homeowner

Key to happiness: Be a homeowner

By Romana King on September 25, 2015
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

If you're a single homeowner, your chances of getting married fall

Want the key to happiness? Than buy a home. Despite the bills and the chores, owning a home is one of the top factors to the happiness of North Americans, according to the OECD. Oh, and are you a single homeowner? Your chances of getting married just dropped. Here’s a few more homeowner stats.

Single homeowners not as likely to marry

→ A single homeowner is less likely to get married than a single renter, according to a study released in July 2015 in the Oxford Journal of Social Work Research. “Home ownership may anchor people, making them reluctant to undertake major life changes such as marriage or divorce, compared with renters,” writes study author and associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Michal Grinstein-Weiss. According to the research findings, married homeowners were 60% to 69% less likely to divorce than married renters. A single homeowner getting married, however, was 51% to 55% lower than a single renter. “These findings affirm that the decisions to marry and divorce may have economic dimensions as well as cultural, emotional, and intellectual ones.”

Owning a home brings happiness

→ According to data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, money might not be able to buy you happiness, but a home just might. The study examined links between homeownership and higher levels of well-being worldwide. In the U.S., housing ranked as one of the most important factors to happiness. The full list of factors was based on the OECD Better Life Index

We’re ready for the smart home

→ According to a new Coldwell Banker/CNET survey 81% of North Americans said they would be more likely to buy a home if it had smart technology already installed. Smart home systems included: connected lighting, WIFI-enabled thermostats, remote-access security, and smart locks. In fact, 28% of current homeowners surveyed already own at least one smart home product and almost half of millennials (ages 18 to 34) are rapidly adopting the technology. Even better, smart home technology helps home owners save money. Forty-five percent for the survey respondents said that, on average, their smart home technology saves them over US$1,100 a year.