Dream of owning a home still a strong one
The housing market is in a shambles. Housing prices across the country are plunging. Sellers are desperate. Housing inventories are piling up. Foreclosures are rising. Home builders are going out of business in record numbers.
Despite all this, a recent poll has found that the vast majority of U.S. residents still consider owning a home a major goal.
Amazing, isn’t it? That cliche’ of the American dream really does hold true, no matter how dismal the U.S. economy gets.
A survey released last week by Trulia, an online real estate tracking firm, and pollster Harris Interactive showed that a whopping 76 percent of U.S. residents still consider owning a home a worthwhile goal. You can read a story about this, printed in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, here.
Interestingly, survey respondents cited most often the more intangible benefits of owning a home. They pointed to the stability their children receive by growing up in a home. They also cited the feeling of being connected to their neighbors and their community, something, survey respondents said, that renters often don’t feel.
The Sun-Sentinel story does quote an analyst from Bankrate.com, though, he does say that U.S. residents have had to adjust their thinking of what owning a home means. It can no longer be viewed as a way to get rich quick. For obvious reasons, the days of buying a home, living in it for a year or two and then selling it a far higher price are long gone.
Today, the best way to make sure your home is a good investment is to live in it for 10 years or more. Then, when you sell, the odds are incredibly strong that your home will be worth more than what you paid for it. It will have appreciated.
The Harris poll results are heartening. It’s good to see that people still consider owning a home a benefit. This is important because so much of our economy is based on the strength of our housing market. Simply put, when our housing market is strong, it helps keep our economy humming along. When our housing market is struggling, as it is today, it drags the economy down with it.
Now we just have to figure out a way to get all those U.S. residents who view housing as the American dream to leave their apartments and begin looking for a new home. The economic recovery is waiting!
