Nearly 70 percent of respondents to a Fannie Mae survey feel the U.S. economy is not on the right track.
Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey found that 67 percent of respondents think the economy is going in the wrong direction, with just 32 percent believing it is going in the right direction.
That represents a slight change from August, when 64 percent of survey respondents felt the economy was on the wrong track. Last September, 68 percent of respondents felt the economy was heading in the wrong direction.
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Americans are feeling even worse about the housing market, a key part of economic life.
Just 27 percent of respondents believe it is a good time to buy a home, while 73 percent believe it’s a bad time to do so. This does represent a slightly better outlook than last September, when 19 percent of respondents said it was a good time to buy a home and 81 percent thought it was a bad time.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), the average price of a home sold in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2025 was $512,800, a slight decrease relative to first quarter’s average of $514,200.
According to the Fannie Mae survey, 40 percent of respondents believe home prices will increase over the next year, with 22 percent believing they will decrease and 38 percent believing they will stay the same.
As of Thursday, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate for a home is 6.34 percent, according to FRED, a slight decrease relative to the average of 6.72 percent at the end of October 2024.
Respondents to the Fannie Mae survey are close to split on whether and how mortgage rates will change over the next 12 months, with 30 percent believing they will increase, 32 percent believing they will decrease and 37 believing they will stay the same.
The survey polled 1,086 individuals from Sept. 2 to Sept. 22, and has a margin of error of 3.79 percent.