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A survey indicated that 2016 was perceived as a poor time to buy a home, with large numbers of individuals stating that they wanted a home but believed it was not the proper time to buy.
The 2017 NAR Aspiring Home Buyers Profile was released today, and the monthly data shows that each quarterly survey received increasingly negative results in regards to whether the quarter in question was perceived as being a good time to buy a home.
Sixty-three percent of non-homeowners, defined as those individuals who rent or live with friends or family rent free, said in Q1 2016 that it was a good time to buy a home. Each of the following quarters saw steady declines, and the year ended with 55 percent of non-homeowners viewing Q4 2016 as a good time to buy a home. This did not cause non-homeowners desires of eventually owning a home to diminish, as an average of 86.5 percent of respondents said they planned on owning a home in the future.
Homeowners viewed the situation quite differently, with 82 percent of respondents indicating that they thought Q1 2016 was a good time to buy a home. However, that figure dropped to 78 percent by the end of the year.
Both groups firmly believed that owning a home was part of the American Dream. An annual average of eighty percent of non-homeowners said in 2016 that they thought owning a home was part of the dream, while 92 percent of homeowners on average said that they thought the same.
But if 86.5 percent of non-homeowners stated that they wanted to buy a home in the future, and the survey shows that they so clearly believed that owning a home was part of the American Dream, what was holding them back from actually purchasing a home?
An average of 53 percent of non-homeowners stated in 2016 that the largest barrier preventing them from buying a home was simply that they could not afford it. The next highest reason, with an average of 21 percent citing this as the cause of their lack of home ownership, was that they needed the relative flexibility of renting rather than being burdened with owning a home.
