More Buyers are Pumped Up Over Exercise Rooms

Nearly half of all recent and prospective home buyers – 47% – rate an exercise room essential or desirable, according to NAHB's latest survey on consumer preferences, What Home Buyers Really Want. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 likely accelerated the long-term, rising popularity of exercise rooms: 27% of buyers wanted this room in 2003, a full 20 percentage points lower than the 47% in 2020. While 'only' 47% of buyers overall want an exercise room, cross-sectional analysis shows that a majority of buyers in certain demographic groups are interested in this room: millennials (61%), Gen Xers (62%), and buyers paying half a million dollars or more for their home (67%). In terms of size, the same study found that 75% of the buyers who want an exercise room are looking for it to be 100 square feet or larger (i.e., at least a 10×10 room). View an analysis summarizing this and other important findings by Rose Quint, NAHB's assistant vice president for survey research. To understand how these preferences vary across buyers of different generations, income, or racial/ethnic groups, visit NAHB's bookstore for a copy of the complete study.