There appears to be a growing trend of prioritizing the looks of a home over its amenities among potential home buyers across the United States. Eric Benaim, the founder and CEO of the Queens real estate group and brokerage Modern Spaces, points to people’s desire for attention on sites like Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok for playing a big role in this growing trend.
“We’re definitely seeing an uptick of people looking for apartments and homes where the developer has put a focus on design details,” Benaim said. “In the planning stages, we are working with interior designers, architects and others to make sure that units look good aesthetically.”
There are more people today who are or aspire to be social media influencers than ever before. For many of them, showing off how their homes look is common. They also usually want these homes to present a nice backdrop for their posts. Additionally, with more people working from home nowadays, these people who spend more time at home may prefer for the interior to be aesthetically pleasing to them.
According to Benaim, he believes the trend of prioritizing the looks and design over amenities when considering buying a home will continue for the long term. Many real estate groups like his are now investing more time and money focusing on elevating the design of homes.
“Even if it is a fad, people are going to expect something at a certain level [moving forward] of what they have already been getting,” Benaim said. “A lot of times, with our photography, we shoot more, whereas before, we just brought in a photographer with just a wide lens and made sure the apartment looked big. We just had them do a couple shots here and there and that was it. Now, we’re doing more editorial style photos to present the apartments and homes in a different way; in a way that we would see the homes on Instagram or Pinterest or wherever, just so it’s more appealing to this type of buyer.”
Much more attention to detail is now being considered when advertising homes. This includes adding various types of finishes being used. Homes are now being styled to the very last detail.
Benaim said he believes younger generations, millennials and Gen Z, are more likely to use Instagram or TikTok than Google to get their information. Modern Spaces has put a lot of effort towards improving their presence on sites like these. They try to show off as many of the units for sale as they can, with several photos included for each.
According to Benaim, the prioritization of design and aesthetics isn’t just limited to homes. It’s also common among restaurants, both in terms of how the location and the food look.
“At every new restaurant that opens up, you can see that they’re spending a lot of time and thought into how they design the space,” Benaim said. “People go to the restaurant and take a picture of where they’re going and a picture of their food to post on social media. That same thinking makes sense to apply when selling a home.”
