With the development and improvement of market system of real estate, urban residents' housing consumption for individual use has become the main body of real estate market So, their individual characteristics have direct influences on their housing purchases and location selections Based on the analysis of the actual condition of housings' spatial distribution in Beijing and the questionnaires on local residents' selection of housing location, this paper mainly discusses three issues: 1) basic characteristics of housings' spatial distribution; 2) local residents' preference on housing location; and 3) interrelations between residents' individual properties and their preference on housing location, etc Three conclusions are followed: Firstly, since the 1990s, the construction of residence communities has been speeding up and the scale enlarging There are two features in housing distribution: one is that the housing construction beyond the 3rd Ring Road assumes a fast development whereas that within the 3rd Ring Road has come to a slowdown or even a stagnancy The other is that housing distribution assumes a circle layer structure toward outskirts of the city, the northern part of which boasts a faster housing development than the southern Secondly, according to local residents' preference on housing location, those housings between the 3rd Ring Road and the 4th Ring Road are still in the first choices of local residents In terms of orientation, north, northeast and northwest gain more attentions Thirdly, revealed by a foreign research, differences in residents' individual social characteristics may result in differences in selecting housing location However, after a research on the relations between local residents' individual social characteristics and their preference on housing location, we find that there lacks a clear cut relationship between them while there is a certain similarity in preference on housing location among those people with different income levels, different occupations and different family structures