Aug. 6, 2008 - ZILLOW'S Q2 HOMEOWNER CONFIDENCE SURVEY RESULTS
Hello Townies!
Guess what? Quite a number of homeowners out there are living in LA LA land - and I'm not talking about California per se. A vast majority of homeowners haven't adjusted their personal expectations when it comes to the value of their own home. Almost everyone agrees that house values have dipped, but few of us are willing to accept that for our own homes.
For proof, I don't have to look any further than the lady in the condo two floors above me who has been trying to sell her over-priced place for the last 6 months. Her agent has been trying to explain this disconnect from reality from the very start, but the owner just won't listen to reason. Furthermore, the owner simply cannot understand why she hasn't received a single offer to buy.
62% of U.S. homeowners believe their home’s value has increased or stayed the same in the past year. In actuality, 77% of U.S. homes have declined in value over the past 12 months.
While only 38% of homeowners believe that their home has declined in value, about 77% of homes actually have declined in the last year
(With the obvious exception on the lady upstairs) people living in the West seem to be a little more realistic, with 44% believing their home’s value has increased (28%) or stayed the same (16%); however more homes in the West have lost value, with 88% of Western homes declining over the past year.
Here is an article in this morning's San Francisco Chronicle explaining this phenomenon in further detail.
If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening with the real estate prices in your area, next week Zillow will release our Q2 Real Estate Market Reports, which chart home value changes for 165 metropolitan statistical areas, the largest report of its kind. And something new this quarter, we will also look at the percentage of homes sold for a loss, and the percentage of home sales that were the result of foreclosures.
For all you media folks out there, you can also join in to our Q2 Market Reports Conference Call scheduled for Tuesday, August 12th, at 11am PT, to hear Dr. Stan Humphries discuss these reports as well as some more findings from today’s survey. To sign up for the Web version of this call, visit here. Or, you can dial in directly at (800) 240-2430.
A seperate conference call for real estate professionals will be conducted by Jorrit Van der Meulen on Thursday, September 4th. (More details to follow.)
