The emotions that Illinois homebuyers most often experience may surprise you.

Homebuyers experience many emotions when searching for a home, but what emotions do Illinois homebuyers experience the most often?  That was the question of a BMO Harris study that looked into the psychology of homebuyers in the Land of Lincoln, and the results were quite interesting.

First, here is a graph we put together that compares the most common emotions of Illinois buyers with those of the national average:

As you can see, homebuyers in our fine state differ from the national averages in some very intriguing ways. We are:

• More excited than the average homebuyer
• Much less hopeful
• Much less cautious
• Much more stressed
• And somewhat happier

Those traits may seem counterintuitive, but we think there’s an underlying thread through all of them, one that’s reinforced by additional survey data from BMO Harris: housing inventory concerns. Simply, finding the right home is still quite difficult in today’s housing market, and the emotions of Illinois homebuyers bears that out.

According to BMO Harris’ survey, 73 percent of Illinois buyers spend up to six months searching for the perfect home, and only 51 percent think it’s possible to find their dream home in their price range. Compared to both NAR’s 2014 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers – where respondents reported that finding the right home was the most stressful part of the homebuying process – and recent analysis by Redfin, which found affordable inventory in Chicago to be down nearly 28 percent from last year, such concerns make only too much sense.