Snapshot of a Homebuyer’s Journey, from a Design Research Lens

A new look at the complex experience of first-time homebuyers

For the last four months, I have been neck-deep in researching the homebuying process. It’s not because I am buying a home (although I do dream of it one day) but rather to as part of a design research project for my graduate program in Design Innovation at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In the Market Insights Lab course taught by Ben Little, my classmates and I dived deeply into understanding the experiences of first-time homebuyers in the United States. And much like a moving truck, there’s a lot to unpack.

At the heart of my research process was four ethnographic interviews that I conducted with participants who were actively in the midst of the house hunt or were new homeowners who purchased their first home within the last two years. From these interviews, I learned the ins and outs of the homebuying process, but more importantly, the crucial moments of emotion, stress, and critical decision-making that punctuated the experience of buying a first home. I want to share one of the key insights below, in the hopes it will validate the experiences of homebuyers and help build empathy for those more removed from the homebuying experience.

The Homebuyer’s Weekend Journey

The image above is a highly simplified version of a design tool called a journey map. Journey maps serve to visually illustrate a user’s emotional states as they move through a process of interaction with a product, service or system. Journey maps can often be complex and highly detailed, but even a simple one like what I’ve created here can get the point across.

This is the typical weekend experience of a first-time homebuyer in 2023. On Thursday, new house listings are going live. On Friday, the buyer might have a private showing or two to get to. But things really pick up on Saturday into Sunday, when buyers are visiting ten or more houses in a weekend, driving all around different neighborhoods and areas. Even though they have only a little time to visit each property, they try to retain as much clarity as they can in remembering which homes they like and dislike after seeing them in rapid succession.

The emotions of the weekend range from anxiety and exhaustion while experiencing information overload, to the hopefulness and excitement of finding a home that buyers feel excited to envision themselves in. By Sunday night, they must make a decision on which home to put an offer in. They may be wishing for some time to mull over this decision to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home that they may have spent mere minutes inside of.

On Monday, the buyer’s offer is finalized, and they anxiously wait in hopes of good news. The work week continues, family responsibilities continue, and life goes on while they steep in the uncertainty. Tuesday brings even more anticipation and nerves, until at last they receive — another rejection. The bad news comes mid-day, and the buyer tries to muster the motivation to finish up their work day and continue other responsibilities on their plate, while emotionally they feel crushed and drained by the disappointment.

This high-pressure cycle of excitement, anxiety and disappointment would be stressful enough if it happened over weeks, but homebuyers experience it over days. What’s worse, this cycle repeats, week after week, for months, wearing buyers down to emotional and mental exhaustion.

What’s the opportunity?

Although this project focused solely on the research phase of experience design rather than designing and testing solutions, I believe that there is an important opportunity space for stress management interventions targeted at homebuyers. An intervention could take many forms, from product to service to policy change. Regardless of form, I believe that homebuyers’ mental health and wellbeing should be as much a part of the conversation as their financial wellbeing. Supporting buyers from this angle could allow them to access more mental clarity in making critical decisions and maintain their own health more effectively as they persevere through the homebuying process.

If you are along your own homebuying journey now, please be proactive in managing your mental health and stress. If you are not in this journey yourself but interact with people personally or professionally who are, I hope that this piece has shed some light and helped you build new empathy for their experiences.