Home Equity Statistics (2026)

Home equity is the market value of the property minus the debt secured against it. On the national balance sheet that is household real estate of $48.7 trillion less one-to-four-family mortgage debt of $13.8 trillion, leaving $34.9 trillion.

The Federal Reserve publishes exactly this calculation quarterly as line 51 of table B.101 in the Z.1 Financial Accounts, so the figure is a direct subtraction of two measured series rather than an estimate.

The real estate figure is at market value and covers all owner-occupied housing including farmhouses, mobile homes, second homes that are not rented, vacant homes for sale and vacant land.

Owners' equity was 71.6% of the value of household real estate in the first quarter of 2026, up from 70.9% at the end of 2023.

That share is high by historical standards. In the years around the financial crisis it fell below 40%, because house prices fell while the mortgage balances stayed exactly where they were.

The reason the ratio is durable this time is that most of the outstanding mortgage stock was written at low fixed rates and is amortising, while very little of the equity has been borrowed back out.

Between the end of 2023 and the first quarter of 2026, household real estate value rose from $44.8 trillion to $48.7 trillion, an increase of $3.9 trillion.

Over the same period one-to-four-family mortgage debt rose from $13.0 trillion to $13.8 trillion, an increase of about $0.8 trillion.

Roughly $3.1 trillion of the gain therefore landed as equity rather than as debt, which is the arithmetic behind the rising equity share.

At $34.9 trillion, owners' equity in real estate is about 19% of total household net worth of $183.0 trillion.

It sits alongside $45.0 trillion in corporate equities, $34.2 trillion in pension entitlements and $13.4 trillion in mutual fund shares.

For the typical household the ordering is different from the aggregate, because equity ownership is far more concentrated at the top than home ownership is. Housing is the dominant asset for the middle of the distribution and a minor one at the top.

Home equity line of credit balances rose for a 17th consecutive quarter in the second quarter of 2026, reaching $459 billion.

That is $142 billion above the low reached in the first quarter of 2022, so roughly half the decline of the previous decade has been retraced.

The supply side moved too: aggregate HELOC limits rose $19 billion in the quarter, continuing an expansion that began in 2022. Lenders are extending the lines, not merely watching existing ones get drawn.

The mechanical explanation is the rate structure. A household holding a mortgage at a much lower rate than the current market will not refinance to extract equity, because doing so reprices the entire balance.

A HELOC leaves the first mortgage untouched and prices only the new borrowing, so it became the only way to access equity without giving up a below-market fixed rate.

That is why HELOC balances have risen for four straight years while cash-out refinancing has not, and it is a rate-driven pattern rather than a change in appetite for debt.

$34.9 trillion of home equity does not behave like $34.9 trillion of anything else on the household balance sheet.

Turning it into money requires either selling the property, borrowing against it, or a reverse mortgage, and each of those carries a transaction cost, a rate, or both.

That is the structural argument for not counting home equity toward the portion of a portfolio meant to be available: the number is real, the access to it is conditional.

The national equity share of 71.6% is an aggregate, and aggregates hide the shape of the distribution.

A large share of that equity sits with outright owners, disproportionately older households who have finished paying, while recent buyers hold small down payments against large balances.

So the same national statistic describes two very different populations: one for whom housing is a paid-off asset, and one for whom it is a leveraged position taken in the last few years.

The equity share is the single most useful number for judging how exposed the housing stock is to a price decline, because it is the inverse of leverage.

At 71.6% equity, a national price fall would have to be extraordinary before a large share of mortgages went underwater, which is precisely what was not true before 2008.

This is the reason the same headline house-price decline can produce a foreclosure wave in one decade and almost none in another.

Rising home equity increases net worth on paper without increasing income or spendable cash, which is why households can simultaneously record record net worth and report difficulty paying bills.

It does reduce risk, because it widens the gap between what the property is worth and what is owed against it.

And it changes the options available in a crisis, since a household with substantial equity has borrowing capacity that an underwater one does not.

The Z.1 Financial Accounts are compiled quarterly by the Federal Reserve Board from a wide range of source data, and table B.101 is the household and nonprofit balance sheet.

The New York Fed's household debt figures come from a separate source, the Consumer Credit Panel, an anonymised nationally representative sample drawn from Equifax credit report data.

The two are not interchangeable and are published on different lags, which is why every figure on this page is labelled with the quarter it belongs to rather than blended into one number.

Equity, real estate value, mortgage debt, the equity share and household net worth are from the Federal Reserve Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States, table B.101, lines 4, 33, 40, 51 and 52.

HELOC balances, limits and delinquency direction are from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit for 2026:Q2, released in August 2026.

Nothing on this page is drawn from an industry estimate or a press summary.