If you`re the average home-oriented person, you live in a single-family ranch house with 6.76 rooms that you bought for $45,475 on a conventional fixed-rate mortgage.
The room you`d most like to have, but don`t, is a walk-in pantry. A greenhouse would be your next choice. There is one chance in five that you`ll repair your driveway during the next five years and one chance in 17 that you borrowed from your relatives to make the down payment on your house.
These and other wide-ranging pieces of information are in the just-published Better Homes and Gardens Inquiry on Housing. It is the latest of the magazine`s twice-a-year studies, which cover topics from food to pets.
The studies don`t try to take a true reading of all residents, said Janet Johansen, who oversees the survey. The studies look for ”the families who are the volume buyers of products for the home and family.”
Questions are answered by mail by a panel of women consumers similar to the average Better Homes and Gardens subscriber, a group that is slightly more affluent, more educated and more home-oriented than the population at large, she said.
For example, families with incomes below $15,000 make up only 14 percent of the panel, although they are 33 percent of the population at large.
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Some findings in the housing inquiry are: Although the average homeowner said her house is worth about $35,000 more than its purchase price, nearly two-thirds of the panel said they are worse off financially than when they moved into their homes.
Panel members owned a high number of appliances: washing machine, 94 percent; dryer, 91 percent; smoke detectors, 76 percent; dishwasher, 71 percent; microwave oven, 63 percent; freezer, 60 percent; garbage disposer, 50 percent; water purifier, 11 percent; instant hot-water dispenser, 7.5 percent. About 49 percent have cable TV.
Natural gas heats 48 percent of the homes, followed by electricity at 20 percent and fuel oil at 15 percent. Wood was the main heat source for 6.5 percent of the sample. Others did not respond to this question.
The items that most panelists said they wanted, but did not have were: a walk-in pantry, 45 percent; bay window, 39 percent; greenhouse, 31 percent;
whirlpool tub, 32 percent; skylight, 27 percent; sunroom, 26 percent; enclosed porch, 22 percent; and sauna, 22 percent.
Although 19 percent of the sample said they wanted a passive solar heating system, just 3.5 percent have one.
Do-it-yourself projects were popular with the panel. Of the 21 percent who built a major addition on their home in the last five years, 45 percent said someone in their household did at least half the work.
Home styles were reported as one-level ranch, 35 percent; Colonial, 12 percent; split-level ranch, 6 percent; Cape Cod, 5 percent; and Tudor, 2 percent. Another 34 percent of the responses were split between ”modern” and ”other.” Only 3.3 percent of the panel lives in co-operative buildings or condominiums.
The overall results of the housing survey seem to show that the American dream of a single-family detached home in a pleasant neighborhood is a reality for most of the people polled. Almost 89 percent live in a one-family detached house; almost 93 percent live in a house they own. The average size of the dwelling was 1,800 square feet.