Buyer Survey Reveals Hope for Home Values to Increase
As Florida home loan rates rise and the real estate market faces a slight slow down, one would think the confidence of owners and buyers would be low. One would be mistaken.
Stewart Title Guaranty Co. recently conducted a survery of home buyers across the nation. The results showed solid
grades for agents, lenders and title companies … as well as hope that property values would appreciate as 2006 wore on.
The single-page surveys were distributed to home buyers following closings in the last eight business days of March 2006. A total of 1,125 surveys were returned from both first-time and repeat home buyers.
“This is the first of an annual survey to be conducted by Stewart to gauge home-buyer expectations, satisfactions and suggestions on how the real estate transaction-services industry may evolve to better serve our customers,” said Malcolm S. Morris, president, Stewart Title Guaranty Co.
Overall, potential buyers and current owners expect their homes to appreciate by 10% over the next year. This coincides with the national average reported by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, which found a one-year 12.95 % average increase in housing values for 2005.
Such optimism bodes well for the continued prosperity of Florida estate market. Individuals don’t appear hesitante to take out a Florida home loan because they see it as a viable investment.
Home buyers also were also asked, “What one facet of the home buying process needs most improvement?” They responded predominantly with two themes: the amount of paper involved, and the lack of communication in the transaction.
“In this day and age of technology, buyers expect much greater use of technology and less paper - and they expect better communication from the parties in the transaction,” said Dr. Ted C. Jones, senior vice president and chief economist, Stewart Title Guaranty Co., who formulated the survey and analyzed the results. “These findings validate the title industry’s push towards a paperless process with electronic signatures and transaction management via the Internet.”
