Due to rising home prices, U.S. homeowners with mortgages continued to rapidly gain equity during the third quarter.
According to CoreLogic’s Homeowner Equity Report, homeowners with mortgages – which account for roughly 63% of all properties – collectively saw their home equity increase by 6.8% year over year as of the third quarter, compared with the third quarter of 2022.
That’s a collective gain of $1.1 trillion – or about $20,000 per borrower – in one year.
As of the end of the third quarter, the total amount of home equity for all mortgaged U.S. properties stood at about $16.97 trillion.
About 1 million properties were in negative equity, or “underwater,” in Q3. That’s a decrease of about 90,000, or 8%, compared with the end of the third quarter 2022.
Borrowers in Hawaii ($63,600), California ($51,300) and Massachusetts ($44,600) recorded the largest annual home equity gains in the third quarter, CoreLogic’s data show.
Homeowners in Miami — which has led major U.S. metro areas for annual appreciation for more than a year on CoreLogic’s Home Price Index — saw equity increase by $61,500 from the third quarter of last year.
“With price gains continuing to help homeowners build wealth, equity has reached a new high and regained losses that resulted from declines last year,” says Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic, in a statement. “And while the average U.S. homeowner gained over $20,000 in additional equity compared with the third quarter of 2022, some markets are seeing larger increases as price growth catches up. These include Northeastern states such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Maine, all of which posted about double the national gain.”
Photo: Tierra Mallorca