For many homeowners, the answer is strong Yes.
Why? Because of one important factor that works in your favor: your own assets. Chances are, if you’ve lived in your home for a while, you know you have significant equity. But how much are we actually talking about? The number can change everything about your next move.
The Hidden Wealth of Home Ownership
Here’s how it works. When you own a house, you build something you call it equity.
Every time you make a mortgage payment, you are wasting your loan balance. And that helps increase your ownership interest in your home. At the same time, home values typically rise, increasing the overall value of your home.
When you put these two things together, you automatically build wealth, month after month, year after year.
And that combination can amount to… Real dollars that one Real difference in your movement. That’s especially true if you’ve lived in your home for a while, which many homeowners have. According to Realtor.com:
“Nearly half (45.2%) of current homeowners have lived in their home for more than 15 years, and 1 in 4 for more than 25 years.”
If that’s you, imagine what 15-25 years of payments + steady appreciation has done to your bottom line. It’s time to see how your wealth stacks up over time.
What that really means in dollars
This diagram uses research come out Realtor.com to show an estimate of how much equity homeowners have built up depending on when they bought. For each time frame, it takes the average priced house and uses it as the base example. The numbers are also shocking. According to the study, if you were to buy an average-priced home in…
- Mid-nineties? You could sit on it more than $400,000 now in equity.
- Early 2000s? You could have it $330,000even with ownership during the housing crisis.
- In 2015? Even in that shorter ten-year time frame, many homeowners have done just that almost built already $285,000 in the area of equity.
Of course, your actual number will vary based on the purchase price, any work you’ve done on the house, the size of your original down payment, and more. The point is…
Many homeowners are sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars of home equity without even realizing it.
Your equity can fuel your next move
This is where this gets really important. That equity can offset almost any concern you now have about moving.
- Afraid of higher mortgage interest rates? Your home equity can cover a significant down payment. And the more money you put down, the less you have to finance at current rates.
- Not sure if you can compete in today’s market? Thanks to your equity, you may be able to purchase your next home with cash. And an all-cash offer is something that will appeal to many sellers because they don’t have to worry about their buyer’s financing falling through at the last minute.
In short
If you haven’t had anyone help you understand the value of your home yet this year, now is the perfect time to take another look. It doesn’t mean you have to sell. But it does mean that you at least know what you can work with – and how far you can get with that number.
If you would like a professional, tailor-made asset assessment, please contact a local agent.
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