Many Americans Still Leery About Housing Market
Despite many months of positive trends, including rising home prices, declining mortgage loan delinquency, and increased home sales, a surprising number of Americans are still not convinced that the housing crisis is over. This is according to a survey conducted by the MacArthur Foundation.
This survey, conducted between April 8th and April 14th of this year, polled a nationally representative sample of 1,355 Americans. Of the surveyed population, a full 70% stated that they believed that the nation was still in the middle of a housing crisis, including a 19% who exhibited a belief that the worst was yet to come. This represents a slight improvement over the previous year, when 77% of respondents believed we were still in a housing crisis. Approximately one in four people said that they believed the crisis was over, representing an improvement from the one in five from 2013.
It would appear that this same attitude is serving to discourage many non-owners from buying their first home. While the survey demonstrated that 70% of non-owners still aspire to one day own their own home, two thirds of respondents do not believe that building equity and wealth through homeownership is still a viable option. With that in mind, 51% of respondents said that renting is more appealing that it was in past decades, while 54% said that buying a home was less appealing than it used to be.
