Many say it's a good time to buy a house

This post comes from Amy Hoak at partner site MarketWatch.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans said that now is a good time to buy a house, according to a recent Gallup poll. That's down slightly from 72% who said the same in 2010 and 71% in 2009.

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Low interest rates and home prices that have fallen sharply from their peaks likely have many Americans believing now is a good time to take action -- even if it's still difficult to get financing and there's potential for prices to dip even lower, said Dennis Jacobe, chief economist for Gallup.  Post continues after video.

Many Americans are still worried about their home values, with 27% saying that home prices in their communities will fall this year and 42% concerned that their own house will lose value, according to the survey results. Twenty-one percent said they expect home prices in their area to increase. A random sampling of 1,018 adults participated in the poll earlier this month.

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Resident perspectives about local home prices could be telling, when it comes to the future health of housing markets, Jacobe said.

"In retrospect, the sharp decline in housing price expectations from 2007 to 2008 may have been a good indication that many Americans saw the now-infamous housing bubble forming in their local markets before many observers recognized it on the national scene," Jacobe wrote in a posting on Gallup.com. "In this regard, Americans' subdued expectations on whether local-market housing prices will increase this year might indicate that housing still has a way to go before it recovers."

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