Confidence in Home-Buying As a Family Investment Falls to Record Low
The belief among Americans that purchasing a home is a family’s best investment is weaker than ever.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that only 43% believe buying a home is the best investment a family can make, down from 47% last month and the lowest level of confidence in home-buying ever recorded. Prior to June’s numbers, this finding had ranged from a low of 51% to a high of 73% since September 2008. As recently as last September, 60% felt that way.
Twenty-six percent (26%) don’t believe buying a home is a family’s best investment, while 31% more are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
These findings come at a time when confidence that home values will improve has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded.
For the second month in a row, less than half of America’s homeowners believe the value of their home is worth more than the amount they still owe on their mortgage. That's just the third time this finding has fallen below 50% since late 2008.
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The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on July 17-18, 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.
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