Voters are passionate about housing, surveys find
Realty Q&A is a weekly column in which Lew Sichelman, a nationally syndicated columnist who has been covering the housing market for more than 40 years, responds to readers’ questions on real estate. However, in this edition, rather than a Q&A, he reviews a series of new surveys on housing and the election.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — At no time in memory has housing been a major issue in a presidential election. Sometimes, the topic has hardly garnered more than a passing mention by either political party.
But if the findings of several recent polls are any gauge, the eventual candidates and their political parties would be well served to address the nation’s housing crisis head on.
Right now, housing is not yet a front-and-center issue for President Obama or any of the Republican presidential hopefuls. But no less than five national surveys indicate that the issue is a top-of-mind topic among voters. Granted, the polls were undertaken by real-estate-centric organizations — Realtor.com, the National Association of Home Builders, HouseLogic, Yahoo Real Estate and Trulia. But the unanimity of their findings underscores just how worried current and future owners are about their homes.
“We were very surprised just how passionate people are” about housing issues, said Julia Reynolds of Move Inc., which operates Realtor.com, the official website of the National Association of Realtors.
Young voters key in on housing
Housing is a particularly strong voting issue for nearly three out of every four Millennials. Also sometimes known as the Internet generation, Millennials were born after 1982, meaning the oldest of them will be at prime home-buying age when November 2012 rolls around.
Millennials were key to President Obama’s victory in 2008, and they should play an even greater role in the coming election. Four years ago, when only 40% of Millennials were old enough to vote, their two-to-one support of Obama over John McCain accounted for 80% of his margin of victory. This year, well over half of the Millennials can vote.
In the Realtor.com survey, Millennials made it absolutely clear that a candidate’s position on housing will influence their votes. On a nearly three-to-one basis, they told pollsters that what the candidates had to say about housing will be either very or somewhat important to their voting decision.
In the poll by HouseLogic, the consumer website operated by the National Association of Realtors, housing came in a distant second to jobs as the issue that will have the greatest impact on respondents’ votes in November. But it was way above national security, health care, energy and the environment, the subjects Republicans tend to harp on the most.
That’s not to denigrate the GOP candidates. Housing isn’t often up there on the President’s list of talking points, either. Yet just over half the participants in the Yahoo study want Uncle Sam do more to save at-risk homeowners in danger of losing their homes. At the same time, a little over one in four said the federal government has gone as far as it should to help struggling owners, and the rest had no opinion on the matter one way or the other.
“Across party lines, people recognize that the importance of dealing with the mortgage and foreclosure crisis is the key to stabilizing the economy,” said Jonathan Voss of Lake Research Partners, the polling firm which surveyed 1,500 likely voters in early January on behalf of the builders association.
And on that score, more than half the respondents said neither party is doing a particularly good job. Thus, said Voss, “the playing field is wide open for either party” to saddle up the housing issue and ride it to the finish line.
Like the HouseLogic survey, the Trulia poll found that fixing the sagging economy comes first in the minds of voters. But nearly three out of four respondents agreed that government policies and programs should encourage ownership.
Asked about specific policies, respondents who identified themselves as Democrats or Republicans had a strong, bipartisan predilection toward helping people remain in their homes. Specifically, 78% think it should be easier for underwater borrowers to refinance, and 67% want policymakers to encourage lenders to reduce borrowers’ mortgage balances in an effort to save their homes.
In the Realtor.com survey, an overwhelming 82% consider housing to be critical to the national economic recovery. And they say helping current owners avoid foreclosure should be a top priority during the next president’s first 100 days in office. At the same time, though, views vary widely about what the government’s piece of the housing pie should be.
One in five want an increased role, 31% want it to remain the same, and 42% said its function should be curtailed. While Millennials want government to prioritize housing and support its recovery, the Realtor.com survey showed that only 25% of that key demographic — and the next generation of home buyers — think an increased government presence is the answer.
With 10 months to go before ballots are cast, anything can happen to sway voters. But right now, a majority on both sides of the aisle think housing could be President Obama’s Achilles’ heel come Nov. 6, according to the Trulia study.
Currently, 57% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans think housing will hurt Obama’s chances for re-election. At the same time, 31% of Democrats and 87% of Republicans think he can right the housing ship by the next election.
The president doesn’t fare too well in yet another recent survey, this one by HomeGain, another real-estate website. While he received enough homeowners’ votes to defeat any of the GOP candidates, real-estate agents favored Mitt Romney over Obama, 34% to 32%.
Nationally syndicated columnist Lew Sichelman has been covering the housing market for more than 40 years. MarketWatch readers are encouraged to send their real estate questions to him at lsichelman@aol.com . Answers will be presented in this column every Friday. However, because of the volume of e-mail he receives, he cannot answer every reader’s query.
A housing came in a distant second to the work as the subject will have the greatest impact on the votes of the voters in November. Nice blog man, Thanks.
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