Brick And Block Houses Are Best Confirms MORI Survey

'Housebuyers are overwhelmingly in favour of traditionally built houses' is the finding of a recent survey carried out by MORI on attitudes towards house construction. Over 90% of respondents said they prefer the advantages offered by a house built using bricks, blocks, and concrete floors.

The survey found that nearly all those responding (94%) wanted a house whose internal walls and floors provide good sound insulation. 62% considered that concrete block walls would provide the quieter house in controlling internal generated noise - up to 12 times greater than indicated for lighter frame homes. This is not surprising since traditional construction provides 50% greater sound insulation compared to normal interior plasterboard and studwork partitions. The survey comes at a time when some volume housebuilders have considered other types of construction in the form of timber, steel frame, and pre-fabrication. However, the survey shows that the housebuyer wants a house built in brick and block.

83% of those questioned by MORI want a house whose walls allow light and heavy wall-mounted furniture and fittings to be fixed in any position. When undertaking home improvement traditionally built houses do not need the use of special fixings or have the inconvenience of locating wall fittings to the nearest stud.

Houses have historically been bought as a long-term investment, and even in today's economic climate are expected to keep pace with inflation. This was borne out by the majority of those surveyed believing that traditionally built homes are the most easily resold and four times as many thought that they would fetch a higher price than framed houses. Furthermore, nine times as many thought that traditionally built houses would have the longest life.

Nearly all require a home whose structure helps to maintain an even temperature in winter and summer. Traditional materials achieve this because of their thermal mass, allowing the house to act as a giant storage heater which absorbs heat from within the house when the sun is out or the heating on, and radiating it back into the house when the temperature starts to drop.

Bruce McDonald, managing director of package company Design & Materials Ltd specialising in the influential and growing area of self build, commented "The survey confirms our own experience with customers, who tend to be better informed than those buying from a volume builder. They prefer the quality feel that solid walls and floors provide. My first self build was timber frame, which had a hollow, echoing feel - I have since built a new home using traditional methods."

Alan Tovey of the Traditional Housing Bureau, who commissioned the survey, commented "Traditional building methods have long been the most popular and will continue to be so, due to the inherent advantages that this method of building offers the house buying public."

Technical details

A nationally representative quota sample of 1,996 adults were interviewed face-to-face, in home, using MORI's Omnibus between 22-25 January 1999 across 163 constituency-based sampling points. Data have been weighted to reflect the national population profile.