Other key findings from the survey include:
• 97 percent of first-time home buyers would never go back to renting.
• 77 percent of first-time buyers believe buying their home is the best investment they ever made.
• Nearly 75 percent of first-time buyers believe that the value of their home will go up in 2006.
• 78 percent of renters believe that it is generally true that people cannot obtain mortgages without perfect credit, and 52 percent of renters believe that they personally can't get a mortgage because of credit issues. But 46 percent of the first-time buyers surveyed didn't believe their credit was "excellent" or even "very good."
• 56 percent of renters believe that a downpayment of 15 percent or more is required when buying a home, and 55 percent believe that size of a downpayment is a personal barrier for them. But 74 percent of first-time buyers reported they put less than 15 percent down.

Split-Levels Are Here, There, and Everywhere

Question: Allison, I want to build a retirement home and my wife and I just can’t decide on a basic floor plan. We want to build in some resale value and think that our favorite split-level designs might be out of vogue. Do you have any information that would help us? Answer: According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, traditional split-level houses are out of style. In 2005, fewer than 1 percent of the more than 2 million houses constructed in the United States were split-levels, according to new housing data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

But don’t expect them to disappear anytime soon. They were built by the thousands between 1955 and 1975. The split-level's relatively efficient floor plan developed as `50s American families, who were filling little ranches with babies as fast as they could, started to feel crowded. "The secret of it was, it gave them a family room in a minimum amount of footage," says housing-industry consultant Tracy Cross.

The design hasn’t disappeared altogether. The latest incarnation is a duplex split-level and they are not for the weak of limb.