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Interesting Real Estate Survey from PNC Financial Services
By JLP | December 20, 2005
Here’s an interesting survey from PNC Financial Services. According to the survey of “wealthy” people, “sixty-five percent of those surveyed said they expect to see double-digit increases in the value of their primary homes over the next five years, with nearly one-third (31 percent) anticipating an increase of 20 percent or more.”
“Wealthy” is defined as:
Adults over the age of 18 with annual incomes of $150,000 or above (if employed), at least $500,000 of investable assets (if employed) or at least $1 million of investable assets (if retired).
What I found interesting about the survey is that it illustrates clearly that a lot of people tend to take short-term trends and extrapolate them out into the future, as if things will not change. Such thinking is foolish.
Topics: Housing Market | 4 Comments »








December 20th, 2005 at 2:01 pm
What I found interesting is the definition of “wealthy”? Do you think this is a good definition? Seems too low to me. Maybe “doing ok” or “well off”, but not “wealthy”.
Your thoughts?
December 20th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
I don’t think “wealthy” should be defined by income. Rather, I think net worth should be the deciding factor in determining who is wealthy and who is not.
December 21st, 2005 at 6:49 am
Me too. Even if someone has $500,000 in assets, they could have $1,000,000 of debt. Is that wealthy?
I saw another study this morning with the following take:
“The data shows that there about 23.6 million affluent households nationally, up 19 percent from 2004. The study defines affluent as those having at least $250,000 in investable assets or $150,000 in income.”
Maybe “affluent” is a notch below “wealthy”?
December 21st, 2005 at 5:23 pm
What did “double-digit increases” mean? Does it mean “10% over five years”? That would be only something like 1.7% a year or thereabouts, which isn’t too unreasonable (and is historically conservative). Or did it mean double-digit increases _per year_?