The aims of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the characteristics related to the environment of single-family houses in the greater Geneva area. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology is applied to the data collected by means of a questionnaire which was sent to 850 owners of houses in Geneva. The pairwise comparisions are done with eight criteria. For the 28 comparisons, the standard levels of preferences are used, but with a multiplicative scale rather than the standard linear scale. The results yield that distance to a green area and quietness of the area are the two most important factors. Another finding is that the proximity of shopping centres and schools is not as important as in other countries