Some preliminary findings concerning experience, motivation, and search are presented from a cross‐cultural study of buyer behavior in housing markets. Data were obtained from probability samples of 652 households in Connecticut and Northwest England. The results include comparative analyses of several dimensions of external search, five aspects of experience, reasons for moving, and husband‐wife reasons for buying. Predictive models of search are developed with multivariate regression techniques. The findings indicate that the experience and motivational variables are not very powerful predictors of search. Significant cultural differences do occur in the level of many variables, but there are some interesting similarities in the underlying factor struct