Barbados or bungalow? Brits spend more time booking holidays than buying homes

Moving house is considered one of the most stressful experiences in life - it can be quite the slog.

Between finding the perfect home that fits the family's spec, liaising with estate agents and praying no-one drops out of the chain, it's considered to be as trying as death and divorce.

However, new research shows we are more carefree than you may think...

In fact, the average Brit spends more time picking out the perfect pair of shoes (especially women - sorry girls) and reading up on where to get the best sun on holiday than they do choosing a new house.

According to a recent survey carried out by HSBC, Brits take just 26 hours to snap up their ideal home, yet a two-week holiday takes anything in the region of 115+
hours to pick and book.

The poll interviewed over 2,000 British home buyers and studied how long particular tasks took in correlation to the time taken to pick a home.

The research revealed we are quite the hostesses, as we spend 31 hours deciding what to cook house guests. We also take 17 hours to pick a pair of jeans after hours browsing websites and wandering around the shops.

By contrast, 10% of home buyers find the ordeal so easy that it's over in two minutes! That's less time than it takes to brush your teeth or toast some bread.

Yet these same people will worry for 17 hours over what to wear on Friday's big night out.

HSBC's head of mortgages, Tracie Pearce, said: 'You'd expect UK house hunters to spend more time to make an offer on a house than deciding on a pair of shoes or what to make at a dinner party - but it's a sign of the times that people are making house decisions quickly to buy their dream home.'

You had better snap up your perfect pad quickly then!