University of Hertfordshire

Based on primary research data collected and analysed through the UH Lafarge Sustainable Living Partnership, this paper explores what customer surveys reveal about why people buy new homes and what those buyers want their homes to be like once they have bought them. Situating this attitudinal data within a context that includes the structural pressures in the UK housing market, the new Localism Act and issues of sprawl urbanism, the paper considers what buyer attitudes might suggest about individual and societal capacity to achieve more sustainable living places.