Housing crisis could play key role in election
Wednesday, November 30, -0001.
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. Read: Mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures fall.
Read: Mortgage rates hold at record low.
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 housingHousing 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.
