When home prices rise, equity does too. And there’s been a lot of that. So it’s not so surprising that the amount of equity homeowners are sitting on leaped to an all-time high in the second quarter of this year. And the number itself has some shock value.
The total equity homeowners hold reached $35.1 trillion, an increase of $1.7 trillion from last quarter and a $3.1 trillion increase from the prior year, according to a Realtor.com analysis of data from the Federal Reserve. Equity is the highest it’s been since 1960; when measured as a proportion of all real estate value it amounts to nearly 73%. To compare, in 2012, in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis, equity as a share of real estate value was only about 46%. In much of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it hovered around 60% to 65%.
