Home Shoppers with Children Face More Difficulties Buying a New Home

Shopping for and buying a home is a daunting process for anyone, but Zillow research shows that for parents the stresses are magnified. To get into their new home, parents living with children under 18 are more likely to go over budget and make smaller down payments. They're also more likely to end up with longer commutes and smaller homes than they wanted.

As you might imagine, the perfect-home wish list starts out longer for buyers who are parents. While those without kids might begin their search in the more walkable, trendy parts of town, parents' neighborhood needs weigh more heavily on safety, enrichment and community. They also place a higher importance on having the preferred number of bedrooms and bathrooms, private outdoor space and community amenities.

As parents with young children at home often are balancing peak child-raising years with peak career demands, location is doubly important to meet both the needs of raising a family near daycare or in a particular school district with the commute to work. A long commute can mean less leisure time with the children, if the bedtime routine comes soon after making and eating dinner.

To find a home with the right features in the right place, they face an arduous search process. They are more likely to experience an offer or mortgage financing falling through and they attend more open houses. Despite the extra effort, two thirds of these buyers with children say they ultimately made sacrifices to stay within their initial budget. Of them, about a third each sacrificed a shorter commute (34.1%), a larger home (31.2%) or their desired finishes (32.7%), according to a nationwide survey of recent home buyers.

When all is said and done at the end of the long journey, 94.6% of parents who recently bought a home say they love it -- slightly higher than those without kids. 

"Having kids is a major destabilizer in life - their needs are constantly changing and seemingly impossible to anticipate. Combine all that uncertainty with a massive financial decision that inevitably requires tough tradeoffs among a limited set of options and has to be wrapped up in time to move before school starts and you've got one of the biggest challenges around," said Skylar Olsen, Zillow's director of economic research. "As markets cool, parents will have more time to breathe and reflect on what tradeoffs they're willing to make. With interest rates back down, they'll be more able to lock in an affordable monthly payment that will last through college. The trick is finding the home that still fills the family's needs as toddlers turn into kids, kids into teenagers, and teenagers into the young adults in your basement. Luckily, most buyer parents end up with a home they love."

The challenge isn't only for home shoppers -- renters with children also have it tough. They fill out 1.9 times as many applications as renters without kids at home, and it takes them a month longer to find their home. Many renters with children also are financially vulnerable, with more than half (54.1%) saying in a survey that they couldn't afford a $1,000 unexpected expense.