The NY Times recently asked, “Will Real Estate Ever Be Normal Again?” The article started a national conversation about the inequality between generational first-time home buyers due to pandemic demands and building shortages. It was revealed that Millennial homebuyers now only control 4% of U.S. real estate equity whereas Boomers owned about one-third of that equity at the same life stage. Using the PureSpectrum Insights Platform, we polled Americans to see how they feel about the current housing market. The platform’s word cloud feature offers a glimpse into current sentiments.
Source: PureSpectrum Insights Platform
The Price of Homeownership
41% of Americans we polled are currently renters and 19% of them said they plan to buy a home within the next year. But what will they have to pay to achieve this? With prices soaring in many areas, only 17% of respondents said they have or would be willing to pay above the asking price for a home. However, 66% said they would be willing to relocate to a different city or region to be able to afford a property. The same amount of respondents said they have or would be willing to do serious renovations on a house.
Of the 53% of respondents that are homeowners, over 50% have owned their homes for more than 5 years. Not surprisingly that percentage changes greatly when filtering by age using the PureSpectrum Insights Platform. 85% of respondents 65+ have owned their home for over 5 years compared to 21% of younger Millennials.
Source: PureSpectrum Insights Platform
63% of Americans believe that housing prices are inflated in their area. When homeowners were asked if they think they could still afford their current neighborhood given the market today, nearly 40% said no. The reason for this though seems to be up for some discussion. 54% of respondents think that America is headed for another real estate market crash. Another 49% think that America is facing a housing shortage. Interestingly respondents in the West are much more likely to believe there is a housing shortage than respondents in the South.
Following the Market
Almost 50% of Americans follow the real estate market on Zillow. Another 40% regularly log onto Realtor.com. 32% of respondents follow realtors on Facebook and 19% look at realtor accounts on Instagram. Home design and remodeling are the most popular real-estate-related content that people log onto social media for. However, 42% of Americans say they do not seek any real estate content on social media.
No matter what their view of the current market is, many Americans are still hopeful about homeownership. 50% of our survey’s respondents said they are currently saving to purchase a new home. And while soaring prices are good for owners, it will continue to make purchasing a home more difficult for first-time buyers. But since homeownership is still a part of the American Dream, new buyers may need to be more creative in the way they achieve it than generations before them.
Curious to dive deeper into our data set? Or let us show you how easy it is to run your own survey.
Methodology
PureSpectrum interviewed 207 online respondents on November 16, 2021, using the PureSpectrum Insights Platform. The platform is integrated with the PureSpectrum Marketplace which combines proprietary measurement tools and third-party data validation to quickly collect high-quality insights. The study was fielded in less than 10 minutes and was cleaned and ready for analysis in under an hour. We targeted respondents within the United States and consisted of a general population audience of 21+ years old. This study uses a 95% confidence level to examine the data.