By Froma Harrop
Real estate mania lives on at the HGTV cable channel, where house shoppers still holler for granite on their kitchen islands and his-and-her sinks in their en suite bathrooms. But in the non-TV reality of middle-class America, the bloom is definitely off the real estate rose.
The rose isn’t dead, mind you. Surveys show an enduring desire to own one’s home, despite the trauma left by the real estate meltdown and recession. But the love is not what it was.
So customer demand continues, Jane Zavisca, a University of Arizona sociologist, told me, “but not homeownership at all costs.”
