Buying a new house can be tedious – just ask our marketing manager who just recently bought her first house. So, how to find the perfect location for your new home? Data might give you just the insight need!
I came to find that buying a home is stressful. Especially if it’s your first one. The expectations are high, and everything must be perfect: the house, the location… Even if you think you know what you are looking for, it takes some thorough research, trial and error and pure luck to find the perfect location.
This is what makes real estate so difficult at times. It gets even more complicated when relocating to a completely new area. It’s also what my family and I faced when we started the process of buying our first house. It took some sweat, stress and perhaps even some tears to get to the point where we are now – in our own house.
My family, my husband and I, had been living in Espoo since 2017 when we moved there from Turku. We both come from small towns, and we never really quite felt at home in the capital region. It was too loud, too hectic and too much traffic, too much everything.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we both started working from home – our 56 m2 apartment in Soukka felt super small for two full-time home-based careers. We started saving up to finally take ourselves to somewhere we could feel at home.
So last fall, we began the process of buying a house. The best course of action for us was to use a spreadsheet to figure out what we wanted and how to best combine our individual wishes and preferences. We were able to do this with just one excel exercise scoring different aspects of houses and their surroundings because as it turns out, we were mostly on the same page regarding the important questions.
Our list looked something like this:
A free tip: discard everything your family and friends tell you about buying a house and what you should want - for a while at least. This stage is all about you and your wishes! After all, you are purchasing something that should work for you and the people you live with, and not for anyone else.
Buying a house is expensive. This step is important as it helps you understand what you can afford and what things on your list to prioritize – and what things you can compromise on. Therefore you should calculate your monthly income and expenses to make your budget. Estimate how much you can put into your property per month and still live comfortably.
We also made sure we would be okay if – or when – the loan interest rates would start to increase. Luckily, we were able to refine the first budget after our wish list, but sometimes you might have to choose your city and neighbourhood first.
Our wish list helped us understand what we were looking for and what kind of filtering we could do to narrow down the search. But somehow, we were still getting nowhere. The issue was that our potential area was so large and there were so many neighbourhoods within that area. There was too much “noise” to focus on analysing the potential properties independently.
Luckily, as a job perk, I have access to our CHAOS dashboards. It was easy to harness the data and location intelligence to my advantage and take a closer look at the potential cities and narrow down our search.
Initially, we thought everything within 1,5 driving distance from Helsinki was okay – yes, in every direction. After some very intense discussion, we were left with 3 alternatives: Raasepori, Lahti and Porvoo.
Initially, I thought Raasepori emerged victorious as it felt like that was what our hearts wanted. However, after looking at CHAOS data, we realized that the services and transport connections were very far from what we wanted. Transportation was important for us since we could be both working from home while having offices in Helsinki, so we had to ditch this idea.
Surprisingly, Lahti ticked all our boxes. It made the most sense to us to buy our house from there. (Don’t get me wrong, I probably will one day buy a small villa by the sea in Raasepori. I love that place.)
Now we had decided on a city (well, as you might know, we were still flip-flopping, because these choices are never easy). The major struggle for us was that Lahti was unfamiliar to us.
We first compared the different neighbourhoods by population structure and household type. We wanted a quiet area, so we were looking for areas with more mature residents or young couples.
To determine if the area was good for us, we looked at:
Finally, we checked on Google what people had to say about these areas. We continued by comparing the price ranges of the different areas by checking the house listings.
Eventually, one area caught our eye; Kilpiäinen. From there, all we needed to do was to find a house that we wanted to go see and check if the area felt right.
The first house we went to see in Kilpiäinen was perfect. We already had some house viewings under our belts. Therefore, we were able to notice how this one ticked all the boxes we wanted from our first home.
But what sealed the deal, was the area. I was taken by surprise when I got to Kilpiäinen. This area was just what I wanted – maybe even better. Very much close to nature, yet not far from services.
So yes, we made an offer – and bought a house!
Now, I’m looking at a nearby park from the large windows in our living room. I’m constantly reminded of the beauty of this area. Summer is here, so the view is all dressed in its summer colours. So lush and vibrant. The best part is that everything is very quiet.
The services in the neighbourhood are more enough for us for a daily living. It takes me just a couple of minutes to drive to the centre for more things to see and do. I can easily grab a bus from the end of the street. The highway is also very close and it’s easy for me to get anywhere I want.
Our neighbours are great too. The area is very calm and favoured by pensioners, adult couples – and there are even some families with kids.
Data helps when making any big decisions – especially when buying a house. Without the help of data and insights, I could have overlooked this area. In the decision-making process, data and insights helped us make more informed decisions. They also helped us with setting some expectations.
Thereby, I felt more secure to take a leap of faith in moving to a new city and new neighbourhood. I can also say that using insights streamlined our process and made it way more efficient.
Not everyone has the access to CHAOS dashboards, that combine multiple sources of data into insights. But you should still look at information and data before making your big purchase.
Once upon a time, I thought I could make these big decisions (like buying a house) based on my gut feeling. Instead, I witnessed years of indecisiveness disappear in a month after harnessing data. So, I’m sold.
There’s a lot of data out there. Use it.
Yours truly, a new homeowner.
Siiri Fagerlund is a creative and effective communications and marketing professional, who has a proven track record in marketing, communications and branding. She also has an extensive experience from citizen engagement and shareholder communications. Siiri holds a Master's in Global Politics and Communication. She is passionate about equality and human rights, and she wants to create a better, more liveable world for us all.
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