articles about “Surveys”
Woulda Shoulda Coulda: Real Estate Regrets to Avoid
Trulia’s latest consumer survey revealed that 52% of people regret something about their current home or the process of choosing it. This season, under the pressure of tight inventory, buyers and renters have to try hard not to make the same mistakes
Spring house-hunting season is upon us. Home searches peak in March and April, and this year the search is especially frantic as inventory is near a 12-year low. Many homes don’t stay on the market for long, so buyers will have to move fast – especially in markets with bidding wars and competing investor activity. But when it comes to searching for a home, as with everything else, moving too fast leads to mistakes and regrets. To find out which regrets are most common – and who is most prone to making decisions they’ll later regret — we asked more than 2,000 consumers what, if anything, they regret about their current home and most recent home-search process.
“Renter Nation” Just A Myth: 93% of Millennial Renters Plan To Buy A Home Someday
Trulia’s latest American Dream survey reveals consumer optimism about homeownership is rebounding as the housing market recovers, even among young adults who were often pegged as renters for life during the recession. Meanwhile, rising prices will encourage some homeowners to sell in 2013.
Trulia’s year-end 2012 American Dream survey reveals how today’s consumers are more optimistic about the housing market and more ready to buy. For Millennials, the recent housing bust shapes their near-term expectations about the market in general, but nearly all young renters want to buy in the long run. Going into 2013, consumers expect inventory to expand, and it looks like that will happen so long as prices keep rising: as price gains push more homeowners into positive equity, more will be willing to sell.
To get Americans’ take on homeownership, we worked with Harris Interactive to conduct an online survey of 2,083 U.S. adults between November 15-19, 2012. For the full methodology, see below.
Americans More Bullish on Buying Homes
As 2012 wraps up, the housing market is looking up on all fronts. It was the first year since 2006 in which home prices will have increased. In addition, construction and sales are both significantly up from their lowest point during the housing crisis, and vacancies, delinquencies, and foreclosures have all come down. Key for the housing market, job growth has picked up, and unemployment has fallen to 7.7% from 8.2% six months ago and 9.8% two years ago. These trends all give consumers more buying power and more confidence in the economy.
Consumer Optimism: Too Much of a Good Thing?
In Trulia’s latest American Dream survey, people told us they want to super-size their homes and expect prices to return to their bubble-era highs.
Trulia’s latest American Dream survey reveals that consumer optimism is rebounding– faster than the housing market itself is. Prospective homebuyers are looking at bigger homes, thinking more seriously about buying and optimistically hoping for higher home prices in both the short-term and long-term.
To get American’s take on homeownership, we worked with Harris Interactive to conduct an online survey of 2,205 U.S. adults between May 22-24 and 2,230 U.S. adults between June 4-6. For the full methodology, see here.
The Return of Super-Sized Homes
Remember when Americans started looking for smaller-sized homes after the bubble burst? Well, it turns out that downsizing was not here for good. After a few months of encouraging housing market news, the “bigger is better” way of thinking is making a comeback. Now, 27% of Americans say their ideal home size is over 2,600 square feet–up from 17% in 2011. Furthermore, the “super-sized” house category, 3,200 square feet and up, saw an even more dramatic increase in interest. While just 6% of those surveyed in 2011 expressed desire for a super-sized home, 11% now say they want a home of this size — that’s almost double a year ago.
It turns out that new-home builders spotted this growing appetite for size: the Census recently reported the average home constructed increased from 2,392 square feet in 2010 to 2,480 square feet in 2011.
0 commentsFor The Love Of Real Estate
Ahead of Valentine's Day, Trulia surveyed Americans across the country to see how much real estate and dating choices intertwine.
When it comes to dating, we all have our own kooky preferences for finding that special someone. Whether we’re looking strictly for dog lovers, vegetarians, outdoorsy types or homebodies, everyone has a check-list of “must haves” or “would likes” to screen out the best possible prospects.
With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, we asked ourselves whether a person’s living situation affects their chances of finding love? Are women more attracted to men who own a home? Do men prefer women who rent in the suburbs vs. the city? We fielded our Love & Housing survey asking more than 2,000 US adults how much they care about a potential partner’s housing preference.
We found some surprising and some not-so-surprising stats on how today’s singles view dating and real estate.
Single and living with your parents? It may be time to move out.
It is now officially official that if you call your parents, “roomies,” you probably have a non-existent dating life. According to our survey, only 5% of unmarried U.S. adults would prefer date someone in that living situation.
But parents aside, most unmarried adults (62%) would rather date someone who lives alone versus someone who lives with other people — which makes sense. Living alone means no distractions and more privacy. However, when it comes to location and the type of home, there was definitely a noticeable difference between men and women. More women preferred to date someone who lived in a house in the suburbs and more men preferred dating someone in an apartment in the city. What can we say, guys like the fast-paced city life and girls long for the white picket fence!
| Would you, personally, prefer dating someone who lives…? | |
| Total, Unmarried U.S. Adults | |
| Alone | 62% |
| With other people | 14% |
| Other or None | 24% |
| Would you, personally, prefer dating someone who lives…? | |||
| Total | Unmarried Men | Unmarried Women | |
| Alone in a house in the suburbs | 33% | 29% | 37% |
| Alone in an apartment in the city | 29% | 32% | 25% |
| With roommates in either the suburbs or the city | 9% | 14% | 9% |
| With their parents | 5% | 6% | 4% |
More men open to shacking up to save money
When you take that big step to live with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you are ultimately giving up your single life and layin down some commitment. But these days, this move is sometimes less about the solidifying the relationship and more about being economical. In our survey, a whopping 74% of unattached renters (meaning those who don’t own a home and haven’t tied the knot/haven’t made the decision to live together) said they would be at least somewhat willing to live with their significant other to save money. What we found was rather interesting. Men are more likely to be very willing or willing than women (51% vs. 34%) to giving up the bachelor pad to save some money!
| Would you be willing to live with a boyfriend, girlfriend or significant other to save money due to the economy? | |||
| Total | Unmarried Men | Unmarried Women | |
| Very Willing | 21% | 23% | 18% |
| Willing | 22% | 28% | 16% |
| Somewhat willing | 32% | 28% | 36% |
| Not at all willing | 26% | 21% | 30% |
Homeownership is NOT a deal breaker.
A majority (63%) of unmarried U.S. adults said it didn’t matter whether their significant other owned their own home or rented. That said, there are definitely more than a few picky daters out there who do care. Women in particular are more likely than men to prefer dating a homeowner versus a renter (36% vs. 19%). What can we say, some women really know what they want.
| Would prefer dating someone who rents or owns their own home? | |||
| Total | Unmarried Men | Unmarried Women | |
| Owns their own home | 28% | 19% | 36% |
| Rents their home | 2% | 2% | 2% |
| It Doesn’t matter to me | 63% | 72% | 54% |
| Not Sure | 7% | 6% | 8% |
Younger daters say homeownership signals commitment
Among unmarried U.S. adults, 43% said homeownership is NOT an indication that someone may be serious about being in a long-term committed relationship, such as marriage. And when we looked at what men and women said separately, there was only a sliver of a difference — 36% of women and 33% of men said owning a home was a signal that someone is ready to settle down.
However, when we took a at the differences in opinions across different generations, 44% of millenials (18-34 year olds) felt that homeownership does equal commitment while only 26% of Baby Boomers (55+ year olds) felt the same.
| Do you think homeownership indicates that a person may be serious about being in a long-term committed relationship, such as marriage? | |||||
| Total | 18-34 YO | 35-44 YO | 45-54 YO | 55+ YO | |
| Yes | 34% | 44% | 28% | 26% | 26% |
| No | 43% | 35% | 50% | 54% | 47% |
| Not Sure | 22% | 21% | 21% | 21% | 26% |
What spells love at first sight for first-time homebuyers
We asked all U.S. adults surveyed to select every amentitiy that would make them “fall in love” with a home. For men and women in the market for their first home, both sexes are actually seeing eye to eye on what’s most important — which according to our survey is the master bathroom, followed by a … walk-in closet!? Guess there is a lot more synergy between the sexes than we thought and that men care as much about their shoes and clothes as women do!
Maybe the battle of the sexes on this issue isn’t much of a battle after all.
Love and housing – it’s a tricky little thing 
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Asking What Our Country Can Do For Housing
5 years later and the housing market’s still stuck in the mud. Obama’s definitely got an uphill battle come election year (oh snap, that starts in two weeks!)
2012 is going to be a big year for Washington DC. Not only are we going to get more political skits from Saturday Night Live (remember this gem from 2008?), but we’re also going to hear a ton of campaign promises on how candidates plan to make things better for the economy, the government purse and housing.
But before we go down that rabbit hole, let’s take a step back and ask the American people what they want rather than listening to politicians tell us what we need. To do this, we asked people across the country (through an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive), what they thought needs to be done to fix the economy. We also asked them what would actually make them believe that things are getting better and if they still believe Obama can turnaround the housing market.
So what did our Winter 2011 survey tell us? To give you the inside scoop, we put together an infographic to help us walk though all the key findings. Let’s get started…
Get Your Priorities Straight – Jobs Before Homes!
The bigwigs at the capital might still be battling it out over how to fix the economy, but if you were to ask everyday Americans what they think the government needs to do, they’ll give it to you straight. Helping people find jobs needs to come before helping people buy homes. To flip this would be putting the cart before the horse, and it’s a sentiment that’s shared by both team elephant (Republicans) and team donkey (Democrats). Just check out the bar chart below to see just how aligned everyone is.
It’s About Keeping What Ya Got
While housing ranked lower on almost everyone’s to-do list, 72% of Americans said government policies and programs should be pimping out homeownership. But wait! Before you get all up and arms about how “irresponsible” that is, let’s point out a notable caveat first. By encouraging people to be homeowners, what Americans are really saying is that they want Uncle Sam to help current homeowners keep their homes, rather than helping renters buy their own pads. The chart below spells this out much better, illustrating the housing policies and proposals that voters care most about.
Housing Recovery? Seeing Is Believing
While the housing market isn’t crashing and burning like it did five years ago, things aren’t exactly coming up roses right now. But really, what’s the light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to a recovery?
To find out, we asked people to tell us what will make them feel better about buying and selling homes (by picking 3 things out of 10 options). Interestingly, the top three beacons of hope were things that you can see with your own two eyes. This includes fewer foreclosures, fewer lingering for-sale signs and fewer empty houses. Check out the flow chart below to see where prices and lower mortgage rates ranked.
A Change of Confidence We Can Believe In
Back in 2008, Obama asked the American people to “vote for change” – there was a bit of marketing magic in how he united the nation around his vision that “yes we can” make things better. Now fast forward to today and it’s almost safe to say that the more noticeable change we’ve seen is a change in consumer confidence.
How do we know this? Well, we had asked people back in 2009 about their confidence in the incoming president’s ability to turnaround the housing market. We then asked this same questions again in 2011 and then graphed the results in a side-by-side comparison. Clearly, America’s faith in Obama’s ability to stabilize the housing market has waned.
So long story short, if the president hopes to have a second term, then he best be ready to fight for it. With about 65% of Americans saying that housing hurt Obama’s re-election, Obama’s got an uphill battle waiting for him. Only time will tell if the President can bring back Candidate Obama from 2008.
To see the full results from our latest consumer survey, click through the slideshare below:
To view a video of our Chief Economist Jed Kolko discussing the findings, see below.
To download the infographics pasted above, check out our Flickr account:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/truliavisuals/
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