Real estate investors predict a victory for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race in November, according to a sentiment index from RCN Capital and CJ Patrick Company.
The investors surveyed gave the nod to Harris in the tight race by a surprisingly wide margin, with 51.4% of the investors expecting Harris to win, and 40.5% expecting former President Donald Trump to be victorious.
Trump did have his supporters. More than 62% of California’s flippers expected Trump to return to the White House, while 34.5% believe Harris will be victorious. The state’s rental investors were 70% to 30% in favor of a Trump victory.
Florida real estate investors offered mixed signals in the survey. About 60% of the state’s flippers were expecting a Harris win, while 33.3% were leaning toward Trump. But rental investors deemed Trump the winner 65% to 30%.
When asked which candidate would create the best environment for real estate investing, Harris, again, was the winner with 47.2% of those surveyed naming her and 39.2% naming Trump. Nationally, flippers backed Harris 56.9% to Trump’s 32.6%. California flippers backed Harris 50% to 40%. Ironically, Florida flippers believed even more strongly that Harris would create a better investment environment, backing her 60% to 30%.
Trump did find support among rental property investors, with 45% of respondents saying Trump would be better for real estate investing. Only 39.6% gave Harris the nod. That sentiment was strongest in California where 75% of rental investors backed Trump and only 25% backed Harris.
“Survey respondents told us that a Harris Administration could create a more robust environment for investing, despite some proposals – like raising the capital gains tax – and policies being pursued by the Biden-Harris Administration, such as rent control and limiting tax benefits for owners of 50 or more rental properties, that seem to be inherently anti-investor,” said Rick Sharga, CEO of the CJ Patrick Company. “It could be that investors are optimistic about the Harris campaign’s initiatives focused on strengthening the housing market overall, and believe that those policies might benefit investors, tenants, and homebuyers alike.”
In a separate survey published by Redfin, a technology-based real estate brokerage, 48.4% of renters believe Harris would be best at making housing more affordable, while only 31.2% of respondents say Trump would be better at controlling housing costs.
The Redfin-commissioned survey was conducted by Ipsos in September of this year. Ipsos asked 894 renters who responded to the survey that, regardless of who they planned on voting for in the U.S. presidential election, which candidate did they think would be best for making housing more affordable? The result was 48.4% of renters believe Harris would be the best choice.
Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather acknowledged that a majority of renters tend to be younger, live in cities and skew Democratic. Nearly 44% of renters who responded to the survey planned to vote for Harris, while 28% were voting for Trump. Another 12.3% didn’t plan to vote and 11.7% were undecided. A small percentage preferred not to answer or were voting for a different candidate.
“While the president has some tools to combat the housing affordability crisis, they can’t fix it on their own,” Fairweather said. “It’s going to take a coordinated effort by the federal government and local governments over the course of many years, focused on incentivizing more homebuilding to ease a housing shortage that has been brewing since the Great Recession.”