Homeowners Remain Pessimistic About Home Values Over Next Year

Perceptions of home values among homeowners has improved little over the past month, though more than half still believe their home is worth more than when they bought it.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Adult Homeowners shows that just 13% expect their home’s value to go up over the next year. While that’s up slightly from last month’s low of 11%, it remains below results found over the past two years. Prior to July, the number who expected their home values to rise during the next year ranged from 15% to 31%.

Thirty-five percent (35%) expect their home’s value to go down during the next year, just two points below the all-time high. Forty-eight percent (48%) expect their home to be worth about the same as it does today. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty percent (40%) now expect the value of their home to go up in the next five years, a finding that has ranged from 35% to 55%. One in five homeowners (20%) expects their home’s value to go down in that time for the second straight survey. Thirty-two percent (32%) of homeowners expect values to remain about the same during that time.

Still, a majority of homeowners (53%) say their home is worth more now than when they bought it. That’s up only slightly from 51% in June, but is down from 58% in April.  One in four homeowners (25%) says his or her home is worth less than when they bought it, while 17% say the value is about the same.

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The survey of 703 Homeowners was conducted on August 14-15, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.