How much have US homeowners gained in equity?

For the first quarter of 2022, US homeowners with mortgages saw their equity rise by 32.2% year-over-year, data from CoreLogic’s Homeowner Equity Report showed.  

This amounts to a collective gain of $3.8 trillion from the first quarter of 2021, averaging $63,600 per borrower.

According to CoreLogic, the year-over-year growth of home prices in Q1 2022 averaged around 20%, which allowed 62,000 owners to regain equity compared with the previous quarter. Across the US, those in California, Hawaii, and Washington saw higher increases in annual equity, gaining more than $100,000.

“Price growth is the key ingredient for the creation of home equity wealth,” said Patrick Dodd, president and CEO at CoreLogic. “Home prices were up by 20% in March compared to one year earlier in CoreLogic’s national Home Price Index. This has led to the largest one-year gain in average home equity wealth for owners and is expected to spur a record amount of home-improvement spending this year.”

Additionally, only 1.1 million homes remained in negative equity for Q1 2022, accounting for 2% of all mortgaged properties. This number decreased by 5.3% from the previous quarter and 23% from the same quarter last year.

Borrowers within 5% of the negative equity cut-off are most likely to move out or fall into the negative as home prices change, said CoreLogic. Looking at the book of mortgages for Q1 2022, this means 130,000 homes would regain equity if home prices rose by 5%. If, however, prices fell by 5%, 167,000 properties would be in negative equity.