Faith in home values persists

But fewer people seem to feel it.

Thirty-five percent of the respondents said their personal finances were "shaky," up from 30% in March and 28% in January.

In January 2006, 38% of Times/Bloomberg Poll respondents used that adjective. With that exception, the current level of unease is the highest in Times polls since the bleak early 1990s.

At the lower end of the income scale -- those in households earning less than $40,000 a year -- 54% said they weren't feeling financially secure.

When broken down by race, worries were greatest among blacks, more than two-thirds of whom rated their finances as "fairly shaky" or "very shaky."

Anxiety might be widespread, but it is by no means universal. Even as economists' predictions about the housing market have darkened over the last five months, people's expectations have brightened.

In December's Times/Bloomberg poll, 26% predicted the value of houses in their neighborhoods would go up over the next six months. In January, 27% did.

In the new poll, which was conducted April 5 through Monday and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, 32% expect an increase.

Stan Smith, a retired minister in Eagle Rock, believes that borrowers have become overextended. He thinks the housing market will collapse. Eventually.

"The values are so inflated. It's ridiculous," said Smith, a renter. "But people are willing to pay the prices to live in certain areas. They want what they want, and they want it now."

Housing experts were a little puzzled by the enthusiastic attitude of some respondents.

"Mortgage credit is clearly tightening, affordability is not good and there are a record number of unoccupied homes for sale," said Scott Simon, a mortgage-bond fund manager for Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach. "We think prices should be down a few percent this year and, if we are wrong, it will be worse than that."

The poll respondents narrowly favored government aid for low-income buyers facing foreclosure, 50% to 41%. Black respondents were strongly in favor, 85% to 12%. The rising tide of foreclosure is expected to hit African Americans especially hard, and civil rights leaders have urged government intervention.

David Poulnot, an insurance agent in Charleston, S.C., is not an advocate of aid. Many people may be just one misfortune from disaster, he said, but what they really need is more discipline.