Potential Home Buyers in State Deep in Gloom : Poll: Only 13% believe California’s economy will improve by year-end. And only three in 20 now see a house as an investment.

SAN FRANCISCO — California’s home builders need look no farther than the economic reports in their morning newspapers to determine why their sales remain so sluggish.

Only 13% of their potential customers think the state’s economy will improve by year-end, down from 30% a year ago, according to a new survey of more than 4,000 California home shoppers.

Only three in 20 still think of a home purchase as an investment, the survey said, and just a third of the people consider themselves serious about buying.

The numbers, to be released to construction industry leaders at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference here today, are worse in the southern half of the state, where defense-spending cuts have severely depressed the economy.

Shoppers in San Diego County had the grimmest outlook of all, with just 7% anticipating economic improvements this year and 50% saying they believe things will get worse.

Shoppers in the Palmdale and Lancaster area were among the most optimistic, but only 16% voiced confidence that the economy would get better while 42% said they believe it is heading downhill.

Robert Mirman, president of National Survey Systems in Irvine, which helped conduct the survey, said that he was “taken aback by the economic numbers” and thinks they reflect “declining confidence in the Clinton Administration’s ability to be successful with its economic policies.”

But he insisted that there is positive news in the survey’s finding that a third of those surveyed were serious about buying this year. While down from 40% in last year’s survey, the decline is far less than the drop in economic confidence.

“To me, that means people are seeing that the value of the homes they can get is at an all-time high,” he said. “There are a lot of projects on the market with prices far below what they were just three yeas ago.”

The lower prices have combined with low interest rates to bring a huge surge of renters and other first-time buyers into the market, said John Schleimer, a Northern California marketing specialist who helped prepare the survey, known as Vision ’93.

“The lights are green for the entry level buyer,” he said. But there is a big blockage in the move-up market because “buyers can’t sell their existing homes and get the equity out of them that they need.”

The survey was conducted at sales offices in 78 new-home projects around the state during April and May. Shoppers who said they had no intention of buying a home within the next six months were excluded.

Of the 4,015 potential buyers interviewed, 1,301 were from Southern California. Statewide, the survey showed, 71% of home shoppers have owned at least one home in the past and 36% are renters.