Americans Slightly More Confident In A Home As A Family Investment

Confidence in a house as a family's best investment appears to be inching back up, but Americans continue to say now is not a good time to sell a home in the area they live in.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% of Adults say buying a home is the best investment most families can make, down 18 points from a high of 73% in February 2009. Twenty-five percent (25%) disagree, while 20% more are not sure.  (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

In June 2008, 79% believed a home was a good investment for most people to make.

Even as the bubble burst on Wall Street in September 2008, 66% of Americans said more specifically that a home was the best investment for most families, but by last August, that belief had fallen to a low of 51%.In November, just 53% felt that way.

Meanwhile, only nine percent (9%) of Americans say, generally speaking, it’s a good time for someone in their area to be selling a house.  An overwhelming majority (71%) don’t think this is a good time to sell a house, and another 20% are undecided.

The number of adults who think now is a good time to sell ties the lowest level ever measured, first reached in early April 2009.  Since then, this finding has ranged from nine percent (9%) to 19%, while the number who disagree has run from 63% to 77%.

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 The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on January 2-3, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.