Rising home prices continued to boost total U.S. home equity during the second quarter.
According to CoreLogic’s quarterly Homeowner Equity Insights Report, homeowners with mortgages – which account for roughly 63% of all U.S. properties – saw their equity increase by 4.8% in the second quarter compared with the second quarter of 2018.
That’s a net gain of nearly $428 billion – or $4,900 per homeowner – in home equity in a year.
States that saw the largest annual gains included Idaho (where homeowners gained an average of $22,100), Wyoming ($20,400) and Nevada ($16,800).
Meanwhile, roughly 2 million homes were in negative equity, as of the end of the second quarter. That’s 3.8% of all mortgaged properties.
That’s a decrease of 7% compared with the first quarter and a decrease of 9% compared with the second quarter of 2018, when 2.2 million homes, or 4.3% of all mortgaged properties, were in negative equity.
The national aggregate value of negative equity as of the end of the second quarter was approximately $302.7 billion. That’s down approximately $2.6 billion, or 0.8%, from $305.3 billion in the first quarter and down about $21 billion, or 7.5%, from $281.7 billion in the second quarter of 2018.
“Borrower equity rose to an all-time high in the first half of 2019 and has more than doubled since the housing recovery started,” says Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic, in a statement. “Combined with low mortgage rates, this rise in home equity supports spending on home improvements and may help improve balance sheets of households who could take out home equity loans to consolidate their debt.
“Home values have continued to rise in most parts of the country this year and we are seeing the benefit in higher home equity levels,” adds Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “The western half of the U.S. has experienced particularly strong gains in home equity recently. In July, South Dakota and Connecticut were the only two states to post annual home price declines. These losses mirror the states’ home equity performances during the second quarter as both reported negative home equity gains per borrower.”