On the House: Survey of the 'affluent' charts $100K-plus club

It must be very nice to count yourself among a group of Americans with a minimum annual household income of $100,000. A group of them - 1,086 adults nationwide - participated in a February survey conducted for American Express to try to gauge real estate and home-improvement trends among consumers.

What the survey found was interesting, though not necessarily earth-shattering.

This year, the news release from American Express tells us, 37.5 million Americans plan to move.

In a normal year - that is, back before the housing bubble burst in 2006-07 and the economy melted down in September 2008 - one-seventh of the U.S. population moved in a given year. Or that's what the major moving companies kept telling me when they wanted me to write about their services.

One-seventh of the current U.S. population, estimated at 318 million, is not 37.5 million, so it seems that the economy and housing market have not recovered sufficiently to be considered normal.

There is, among the "affluent" group queried in the survey, a growing tendency to rent houses rather than buy.

According to American Express, 17 million people in this country plan to purchase a home or condominium this year, while 16 million say they will rent.

But again, the numbers still don't resemble those typical of "normal" years, when two-thirds buy and one-third rent.

There is still considerable uncertainty among those in their 20s and early 30s about buying houses, given that their primary experience with real estate came during a deep, prolonged downturn.

Take the city apartment market as a gauge:

Carl Dranoff is completing a luxury rental building at Broad and South Streets because his 777 South Broad a few blocks away has been so successful.

A J.P. Morgan investment fund paid $113 million for Edgewater Apartments at 2323 Race St. in March. What's more important about this transaction is that the adjacent site, approved for more rental apartments, was included in the sale.

At Broad and Chestnut Streets, the Avenue of the Arts Building, which has, for several years, housed students at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, will be renovated as 220 luxury apartments.

And in East Falls, Treetop Development of Teaneck, N.J., purchased Charter Court at East Falls, a 502-unit high-rise apartment complex, to offer an alternative to higher Center City rents, the company said.

Multifamily development in the suburbs, especially on the Main Line and along the Delaware River in South Jersey, is hot, as well.

What buyers are finding, the American Express survey said, is that sellers are more optimistic than they were in 2010, and that they are asking more for their houses because there is growing evidence they will get it.

That, area real estate agents say, depends on a given house and its location, owing to the shortage of homes for sale in many communities where people are looking to live.

Obviously, the shortage was aggravated by this year's harsh winter. Agents have told me that many sellers who had planned to put their houses on the market were turned off by all the cold, snow, and ice.

(I'm speaking for consumers generally, not the survey's affluent respondents, so take it with the usual grain of salt.)

Finally, 73 percent of survey respondents said they plan to make home improvements this year, and most will do it themselves, up 6 percentage points from 2013.

Could it be another sign there is still not enough money to hire people, even among the affluent?