Posted on August - 22 - 2010
Americans Scale Back Desires for Home Ownership
Americans’ aspirations about homeownership are becoming more modest, envisioning smaller homes for themselves when they think about buying a home at all.
Over two-thirds of renters (68 percent) said they don’t anticipating buying a home for at least two years, according to the newest American Dream survey by real estate information company Trulia.com, with 27 percent saying they don’t ever plan on buying a home of their own.
Ideal home shrinks
The ideal home size has also declined, to an average of 2,100 square feet, compared to 2,400 a decade ago. Only 9 percent of respondents said their ideal home would be in excess of 3,200 square feet, the so-called “McMansions” that were popular in the boom years. The biggest group of survey respondents, 28 percent, said their ideal home would be in the 2,000-2,600 square foot range, while an almost identical 27 percent preferred the 1,400-2,000 square foot size. Less than one-quarter of survey respondents favored homes greater than 2,600 square feet in size.
Fewer see home ownership as part of their dream
Perhaps most notably, the percentage of Americans who view home ownership as part of their personal American Dream has declined notably in just six months, with 72 percent expressing that view in the current survey, down from 77 percent six months ago. Even so, slightly more Americans say their attitudes toward home ownership have become more positive over the past six month than those who say their views have grown more negative, by a margin of 23 percent positive to 19 percent negative.
Renters could be persuaded to buy
The results of the survey among renters leave only five percent who anticipate buying a home in the next two years. However, of renters who do anticipate buying a home eventually, nearly 4 out of 5 said changes in circumstances could persuade them to buy. The most common reason, cited by 47 percent of such renters, would be the ability to save up enough for a down payment. Getting a new job, lower interest rates or a promotion were each cited as possible reasons by about one-quarter of those renters. Fewer that one in 10 (9 percent) cited a stabilized local real estate market as a potential motivation.
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