It's hard to escape the bad news about national real estate trends in the news these days. What runs through homeowners' minds when they see such a story? Apparently they are thinking, "thank goodness doesn't apply to my home!".
Today Zillow released a survey comparing home owner perception verses reality with respect to home values.
Here is the punchline: Despite substantial declines in Q1 2008, more than 70% of homeowners believe their home's value increased or stayed the same in the past year. The reality is that 75% of the homes in the US actually decreased in value. In fact, Q1 bought 7.7% YOY declines, which was the largest YOY decline in more than a decade.
Here is an illustration of how perceptions and actuals vary by region:
Click here if you are interested in reading the full report.
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Patricia- Great point! In the full press release, this point is made.
"While we assume there's a fair bit of owner denial reflected in these results, we also believe a large portion of the population simply isn't paying close attention to their housing market because they're not currently looking to sell or finance," said Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow.com vice president of data & analytics. "But even among those who say they're planning home-related activities this year, confidence appears strong despite continuing declines. Approximately one-third of homeowners say they are equally or more likely to sell their home, refinance or take out a home equity line of credit this year, which is essentially unchanged from sentiment in the fourth quarter."
...well, as bubbly and as varied as the market is, we have seen a 2% increase in home values in our area of the Midwest and your graphic says there is no change.
Steve
Sara... the report is just great... thanks so much for sharing. Take care...
Its so funny how people always tell you how much better their house than therir neighbors is.
I was in the same boat. I owed more than my house was worth AND I was on an ARM that I thought was a fixed rate. After my rate started adjusting, more than a dozen loan officers tried to help me and all they did was lie to me and talk me into wasting tons of money on appraisals. I found this place online called www.proloanmods.com and they helped. They took me from an 11.125% rate to a 6.25% rate that is now fixed. I'm not scared of losing my house anymore. The government sure didn't help!