Poll: Most Say Worst Over for Housing Market
This poll was taken as part of CBS News' "Where America Stands" series, an in-depth look at where the country stands today on key topics and an outlook for the future decade.
That's not to say most Americans expect the value of their home to skyrocket: Fifty-one percent predict that their local housing market will hold steady over the next year.
But nearly one in three predict that their market will get better in 2010. That's an increase of 15 percentage points from December of 2008, when just 17 percent expected improvement.
A mere fifteen percent, meanwhile, say their local market will get worse over the next year. That's an 11 point drop from the 26 percent that expected their local market to worsen in December of 2008.
While certain regions of the country have been harder hit by the housing crisis – particularly in the West and South – Americans' outlook on their local market varies little by region. In addition, both mortgage holders and renters have similar outlooks.
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1090 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone January 14-17, 2010. Phone numbers were dialed from random digit dial samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.
This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.