Your Home's Equity Can Power Your Next Move

If you’re a homeowner who needs to make a change because your house has become too small or too big for your current situation, you might be torn on whether or not to sell right now. Maybe it’s because you don’t want to take on a higher mortgage rate on your new home.

If that’s your biggest hurdle, understanding that your equity may be exactly what you need to help you feel more comfortable about making the change you know you need to make.

What Equity Is and How It Works

Equity is the current value of your home minus what you owe on the loan. And recently, that equity has been growing far faster than you may expect.

Over the last few years, home prices rose dramatically, and that gave your equity a big boost very quickly. While the market has started to normalize, there’s still an imbalance between the number of homes available for sale and the number of buyers looking to make a purchase. And it’s because homes are in such high demand that prices are back on the rise today. Rob Barber, CEO of ATTOM, a property data provider, explains: “Equity levels were high even during the recent downturn, and now they are going back up and better than ever.”

How Equity Benefits You in Today’s Market

With today’s affordability challenges, your equity can be a game changer when you move. Here’s why. Based on data from ATTOM and the Census, nearly two-thirds (68.7%) of homeowners have either paid off their mortgages or have at least 50% equity (see chart below):

That means roughly 70% have a tremendous amount of equity right now.

Once you sell your house, you can use your equity to help with your next purchase. It could be some (if not all) of what you’ll need for your next down payment. It may even be enough to allow you to put a considerably larger down payment on your next home, so you don’t have to finance quite as much.

If you’ve been in your current house for years, you may have even built up enough equity to pay in all cash. If that’s true for you, you’d be able to avoid borrowing altogether, so you wouldn’t have to worry about today’s mortgage rates.

How To Find Out How Much Equity You Have

The best way to understand how much equity you have is to know the current value of your property. You can find out by visiting our website: www.makeyourmovewithmari.com/evaluation.

Then let’s connect at 508-360-5664 or [email protected]. We used our equity last year to purchase our new home, so you can benefit from our experience.

And remember: before the pandemic when houses could be on the market for as long as six months, the vast majority of sellers didn’t know where they going before marketing their property. But, you and millions of others successfully found their next home.

You can do it again!

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Mari is in Dallas this week (good grief!) attending the 20th Tom Ferry Success Summit. Ferry is the leading business coach and trainer in the real estate profession. He’s promising three days of outstanding speakers and learning opportunities that will allow us to help you successfully make your change to a home that better suits your current lifestyle.

Mari and Hank