Owning a home is more important to people than getting married or having children, according to a Barratt survey. The Barratt Home Buyers Panel, set up to monitor the changing attitudes of home buyers and home owners in Britain, found that 71% of the 2,900 respondents rated home ownership as eight or above out of ten. This contrasts with 46% who attributed the same level of importance to marriage and 44% who rated having children as their biggest priority. Job satisfaction and location of living were runners up in importance to home owners, at 68% and 69% respectively. Taking foreign holidays and having an active social life were bottom of the list of life priorities for the respondents, at 24% and 27%. “These results demonstrate that the economic problems of the last three years have not diminished the huge appetite for home ownership in Britain,” commented Barratt’s chief executive Mark Clare. “But this near-universal aspiration is in stark contrast to the chronic undersupply of housing and the increasing inability of the average person to buy a home of their own unassisted.”