I don't know about you, but I love to geek out on demographics, surveys, reports and all manner of information -- especially when it concerns real estate.On tap today is a profile of homebuyers in Illinois, courtesy of the National Association of Realtors 2007 profile of home buyers and sellers.
So who's buying in our state? Here are the stats:
- The median age of homebuyers in the Land of Lincoln last year was 40. (Remember that "median" is the middle, meaning half were younger than 40 and half were older than 40.) For first-time buyers, the median age was 31.
- Married couples made up 58 percent of Illinois buyers. Single women were 21 percent and single men were just 10 percent of buyers. Eight percent of buyers were unmarried couples.
- First-time buyers bought 37 percent of the homes purchased in Illinois in 2007.
- The youngest homebuyers -- ages 18 to 24 -- used a social networking site (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) to cruise for homes.
- Eighty-three percent of all Illinois homebuyers used the Internet to begin their search for a home last year.
- The typical buyer looked for eight weeks and saw a median of 12 homes before making their decision.
