(MONEY Magazine) – Good-bye, subterranean homesick blues. A nationwide poll of 300 MONEY subscribers conducted by the Gallup Organization in March shows that people have become far more upbeat about the path of home prices than they were before the Persian Gulf war victory. (The poll's margin of error is plus or minus six percentage points.) Though economists are predicting only slight after-inflation gains in home prices (see the box on page 82), some 35% of the 253 homeowners in our sample believe that the value of their houses will rise within the next year, while only 6% felt they would fall. Fifty-five percent expected prices to remain stable. These results contrast sharply with the views that prevailed in our February Americans and Their Money poll of 500 households. In that survey of the general population, we found that before the success of Operation Desert Storm, fewer respondents expected prices to go up (28% vs. 35%) and about three times as many thought prices would drop (18% vs. 6%). MONEY subscribers may, of course, be more optimistic about home values than the general population. They certainly are more committed to home ownership: 84% of subscribers own homes, compared with just 64% of all U.S. households. In any event, the ebullient postwar view holds even among subscribers living in areas where home values have lagged inflation for the year that ended April 1: 34% of homeowners in such regions expected house prices to rise over the next year, while only 6% said they would decline. Other highlights of the March poll: -- Some 15% of subscribers who don't own a home plan to buy one within a year and 49% expect to buy inside of five years. -- About 20% of the homeowners polled plan to trade up to a more expensive house within five years. -- Only 6% of MONEY subscribers who don't already own a second home plan to buy a vacation retreat in the next five years. One reason for not buying: 35% said such homes were still too expensive. -- W.L.U.