Homeowners in Denial? Not any more!
by Tom on February 12, 2009
in house prices
This matches very closely with what my personal experience is seeing. Many people are finally realizing that the housing market is quite a bit softer than it was.
How am I seeing it? A couple of things:
- The amount of people who are calling to refinance their house has dropped dramatically even though rates haven’t changed that much. Many people know they can’t refinance due to what their house is worth.
- There’s a lot more realistic assessments from consumers when they are at first talking about the value of their home than it was three months ago.
Is this healthy? Well, let’s just say that it’s not healthy that property values are falling but it is healthy that the patient is realizing they have an illness.
What do you think?
Tom Vanderwell
Homeowners No Longer in Denial: Study : HousingWire || financial news for the mortgage market
“It’s clear that the ‘not my house’ sentiment that was so prevalent in earlier surveys is waning, and homeowners are opening their eyes to the unfortunate reality of significant losses in home values across most of the country,” said Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow’s vice president of data and analytics
The message has finally sunk in. Homeowners fought it, in the US, for about 2 years. I think that “what is your home worth?” websites, while often wildly inaccurate, have helped get the point across. But the main source of information that is convincing homeowners is the relentless nightly news.
Given that shift of mindset, both real estate agents and mortgage lenders should have less trouble convincing homeowners that their valuations are “correct” (what the market will bear).