Opinions Concerning The Financial Aspects Of Owning A Home

Yesterday, the CalculatedRisk blog posted a chart showing the long-term housing prices for both the Case-Shiller and CoreLogic indices.  Here is the chart:



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Given the continual decline in residential real estate prices, I have found an April 12 report from Pew Research Center, titled "Home Sweet Home.  Still." (pdf) to be interesting.

The report contains a variety of statistics on the attitudes of respondents concerning home ownership from a financial perspective.

One of the main findings of the research, as seen in the overview:

The five-year swoon in home prices has done little to shake the confidence of the American public in the investment value of homeownership. Fully eight-in-ten (81%) adults agree that buying a home is the best long-term investment a person can make, according a nationwide Pew Research Center survey of  2,142 adults conducted from March 15 to March 29, 2011.

As well, later in the report there are a variety of survey results concerning respondents' attitudes toward the overall economy and their own financial conditions.  One statistic that I found notable is the following, found on page 12:

Overall, the public remains skeptical about the pace of the economic recovery. Only one-infive (21%) say the economy is recovering, and an additional 29% say the economy is not recovering yet but will soon. Nearly half (47%) say it will be a long time before the economy recovers.

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The Special Note summarizes my overall thoughts about our economic situation

SPX at 1345.10 as this post is written