40% of owners expect home values to fall

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- U.S. homeowners say they're very pessimistic about their home values in both the short- and long-term, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday indicates.

Forty percent of U.S. homeowners said they expect their home's value to drop in the next 12 months, the highest report of pessimism so far, Rasmussen Reports said. Before the latest survey, the number ranged from a low of 19 percent to a high of 37 percent since April 2009.

Just 13 percent of survey participants said they expect their home's value to go up over the next year, up 2 points from the all-time low reached in July. Forty-five percent said they think their house will be worth about the same amount in one year's time, the survey said.

Longer term, 36 percent of respondents said they believe their home's value will rise during the next five years, down from 40 percent in August.

Survey results are based on nationwide telephone surveys of 753 homeowners conducted Thursday and Friday. The margin of error is 4 percentage points