Are Homes Today Fairly Priced?

(MoneyWatch)  According to 18 percent of the respondents of a recent poll by HomeGain.com, a real estate data website, the answer is "yes." The respondents were Realtors who were asked about their homebuyer clients, which proves that either the agents are dosed on optimism or the clients are being unrealistic about their readiness to buy, because actual sales have fallen off a cliff, plunging from an annual rate of around six million two years ago to a current annual rate of around four-and-a-half million.

In fact, the poll has even more striking news -- 11 percent of respondents believe that housing isn't just fairly priced, it's cheap, with the listing price of homes being anywhere from slightly to 31 percent under their actual value. Add that 11 percent who think housing is "cheap" to the 18 percent who think it's "fairly priced" -- and holy cow, more than a quarter of the poll's respondents throughout the country are in the mood to buy houses and condos! Who knew?

Apparently not the banks, according to the latest TARP analysis (surprisingly decently written, for a government report). The summary is that among the top 20 banks (which have 90 percent of the loan balances), mortgage lending was essentially flat in the fourth quarter.

So maybe that explains the disparity between the consumer optimism of the poll and the actuality of terrible terrible (at least to a Realtor) sales volume numbers that we're clocking.

Still, it's worth noting that it's Morning in America according to people in the West, where 36 percent of respondents think housing is fairly or cheaply priced. That's a big contrast to the Northeast, where I live (go team Manhattan!), where only 23 percent of respondents think so.

So now I have a picture of the country as a giant weather map, only the front that's advancing isn't snow from Canada, it's consumer confidence from California. Unfortunately, however, I'm afraid it will take some lending and a couple of years to blanket the country.