Americans still place a high value on homeownership, but qualifying for a mortgage and raising a down payment in an economy that won’t produce jobs, keeps many of them sitting on the fence.
Eighty-nine percent of owners and 59 percent of renters feel that homeownership is important to the American family while 87 percent of owners and 73 percent of renters feel homeownership is an economic cornerstone, according to Hanley Wood’s Housing 360 Survey.
Indeed, housing, including shelter itself, household operations, insurance, fuels and utilities, water, sewage and trash services and furnishings, among other expenditures, account for about 40 percent of the Consumer Price Index, an index of consumer expenditures, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Approximately one in three renters and about one in five existing homeowners think it’s a good time to buy a home and plan to make a move to buy in the next two years, according to the survey.
The survey was electronically delivered to homeowners and renters from a national sample of adults 20 years of age and older in June to early July 2011 resulting in 3,005 results, including 1,954 homeowners and 1,051 renters.