RISMEDIA, August 25, 2009-HomeGain, one of the first websites to provide free instant home values, announced the results of its quarterly Home Prices Survey of Realtors® based on the responses of 1,084 U.S. real estate agents and brokers.
The third quarter survey shows that 69% of Realtors think home prices will either stay the same (46%) or increase (23%) in the next six months. Compared with HomeGain’s second quarter survey, 71% of Realtors thought home prices would stay the same (49%) or increase (22%) versus 45% of Realtors who thought home prices would stay the same (36%) or increase (11%) in the first quarter survey.
According to the third quarter survey, 38% of homeowners believe that their homes should be listed 10 to 20% higher than what their Realtors’ recommend, up from 36% of homeowners who believed so, but down from 45% in the first quarter.
Sixty-four percent of home buyers think that homes are overpriced, unchanged from the second quarter and up from 59% of home buyers who thought homes were overpriced in the first quarter.
Seventy-three percent of home sellers believe that their homes are worth more than their Realtors’ recommended listing price, up from 69% in the second quarter survey and 71% in the first quarter survey. The survey showed that while home sellers still believe their homes to worth more than their Realtors say they are, they have tempered their price expectations. In the current survey, only seven percent of home sellers believed their homes were worth 21-30% more than their Realtors’ recommended price versus 14% who so believed in the first quarter survey.
“The third quarter HomeGain Home Prices Survey of Realtors reveals a continuation of the stabilization trends that became evident in the second quarter survey,” stated Louis Cammarosano, General Manager at HomeGain. “The vast majority of Realtors expect prices to remain the same or increase in the next six months. Buyers continue to believe that homes are overpriced and expect bargains, while a greater percentage of sellers, perhaps emboldened by stabilizing conditions, think their homes should be priced higher than their Realtors are recommending.”
Forty-two percent of Realtors surveyed indicated approval of Barack Obama’s performance as President, down from 57% in the second quarter. Forty percent of surveyed respondents ‘strongly disapprove’ of the President’s performance and 18% ‘somewhat disapprove’, earning the President a 58% disapproval rating. The President fared slightly better in the nationwide Rasmussen Daily Presidential Approval Index taken during the same period as the HomeGain survey, with his approval rating hovering in the 47-49% range.
For more information, visit www.homegain.com.
