LONDON housebuyers are looking for fun. First priority for househunters in the capital is to find an area that will give them a great lifestyle.

Far from letting all other considerations fly out of the window as soon as they discover their dream home, Londoners want to know every detail of the local scene before making their next move, according to this month's report from What House? Online.

The magazine's survey of 1,000 househunters reveals that Londoners are much more likely than homebuyers in other regions of the country to research leisure facilities such as restaurants, parks, pubs and gyms.

More than two thirds of home buyers in the capital checked out the local shops (compared with 56 per cent nationally) when they set off on a househunting spree.

Four out of ten of those surveyed were also interested in the quality of local restaurants (against 21 per cent of buyers around the country) and 30 per cent checked out the number of pubs nearby.

A massive 62 per cent made the time to explore the local parks and recreation spaces up 21 per cent on the national average.

Perhaps less surprisingly, the survey shows that Londoners are almost twice as likely as people nationally to check out public transport links before buying a house.

Transport congestion and the expense of travelling in the capital maybe exactly why home buyers in London are so much more determined to have good leisure and entertainment facilities nearby.

Yet when it comes to more sober considerations such as local crime statistics and traditionally important facilities such as doctors and places of worship, Londoners were less likely to care about these than the average buyer.

Instead, people living in London were more likely than people in other areas to judge an area's respectability by the standard of surrounding properties and local house prices.

However, despite being the most thorough sector of the population at researching an area before buying a home, a massive 94 per cent wanted yet more information.

The survey findings have been used to develop a new "intelligent property search" website What House? Online (www.whathouse .co.uk) which for the first time allows homebuyers to input a postcode for a particular property and immediately see all the local amenities on an easily scalable map, including the nearest supermarkets, transport links, schools, restaurants, pubs and gyms.

What House? editor Lisa Isaacs says the online version of the magazine is particularly useful for families with children.

"Parents can browse school performance tables, choose a school which interests them and then search for suitable properties nearby," she said.

The site also ties together house price data from the land registry with the property database allowing users to compare asking prices to actual prices paid in a street or area," she added.