While the Gallup survey released on Thursday shows that Americans are regaining their faith in home ownership, at least as a worthwhile investment, another survey conducted by Harris Poll for Redfin reveals that a quarter of Americans regret buying the home in which they reside. The poll provided no insight as to why this 25 percent of respondents suffered buyers' remorse but did show some demographic differences.
The biggest discrepancies came with age, education, and household income. Those age 65 and older would overwhelmingly (85 percent) buy their homes again while only 72 percent of younger persons would do so. People with a household income of $100,000 or more expressed more satisfaction with their homes (86 percent) than those with incomes below that amount (70 percent). Likewise those with a college degrees had higher home satisfaction (82 percent) than those with some college education or less (72 percent). Women and people who have children in the home had slightly higher levels of regret (27 percent and 28 percent respectively) and remorse was expressed more frequently by those living in the Midwest (28 percent) than those in the West (20 percent).
The Harris survey was conducted among 2,000 adult homeowners and revealed that 89 percent of those who had bought their home within the last 10 years had used a real estate agent and better than half (47 percent) said they "loved working with" their agent. The poll also revealed a sharp generational divide in attitudes toward real estate agents: 31 percent of homeowners ages 18 to 34 who have bought or sold a home in the past 10 years loved working with their agent, compared with 52 percent of homeowners ages 35 to 44.