People who bought a home the year prices bottomed out have earned a median $141,000 or 261% in home equity.
Homeowners in Tacoma, Washington and Virginia Beach saw the biggest percent increases in home equity since 2012.
People who purchased homes in 2012, the year prices reached their lowest point following the Great Recession, have earned a total of $203 billion in home equity. Individually, the typical 2012 homebuyer has earned $141,000, or 261 percent, in home equity.
The typical home that sold in 2012 has increased $110,000 in value, from a median sale price of $210,000 in 2012 to an estimated value of $320,000 in September 2019. The typical 2012 homebuyer started off with $54,000 in home equity and has $195,000 today.
That’s from a Redfin analysis of the home equity earned from roughly 1.4 million homes purchased across 138 markets in the U.S. in 2012. To measure gains in home equity, we assumed that 2012 equity was equal to the down payment used to purchase the home. Current equity was calculated in one of two ways: For homes that are still owned by the 2012 purchaser, it’s the difference between the home’s current Redfin Estimate and the homeowner’s outstanding loan balance; for homes that have sold, it’s the difference between the home’s subsequent sale price and the homeowner’s outstanding at the time of the sale.
“The opportunity to build wealth through home equity when prices hit their low point was available only to a fortunate subset of Americans who had enough cash for a down payment,” said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “And now many people who weren’t able to buy into homeownership during that window of time find themselves on the other side of the housing market coin: Many areas are just plain unaffordable for people who don’t have equity built up to trade in for a new home. And those who are waiting in the wings, hoping to buy a home when the next recession hits, probably won’t be as lucky as buyers were in 2012. Even if home prices do come down slightly, the US housing market won’t be impacted nearly as much as it was during the Great Recession and home equity gains won’t be nearly as big.”
The massive 12-figure total equity growth is driven by large, expensive coastal markets—mostly in California—where home values have increased by at least two-thirds and the typical homeowner has earned more than $300,000 in equity since 2012. The metros with the biggest total home equity gains in dollars are Los Angeles ($15 billion), Seattle ($8 billion) and Oakland ($7.9 billion). For complete data on each of the 138 metros included in our analysis, see the table at the end of this report.
The list of places with the biggest percent increases in home equity includes many metros near large U.S. military bases, including Tacoma, Washington (1453%) and Virginia Beach (1333%), home to the largest concentration of military personnel outside of the Pentagon. That commonality is partly explained by the fact that a lot of homebuyers in those areas would have been able to take advantage of a loan from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (known as a VA loan) or from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), which often have small or no down-payment requirements, meaning their home equity started out particularly low in 2012.
“Just like many other places around the country, the Hampton Roads area, which includes Virginia Beach, was hit hard during the Great Recession. But because there’s such a large military presence in Virginia Beach and its surrounding cities, our housing market will always be one of the most stable in the country,” said local Redfin agent Jordan Hammond. “People in the military are able to obtain VA loans, and military buyers are also often able to obtain low interest rates. That turned out to be hugely beneficial for people in the area who bought homes in the wake of the recession.”
Ellen Campion, a Redfin agent in Tacoma, said the housing market in her area is large enough that the military population is just one of many factors that have contributed to massive home-equity growth. “Buyers were paying too much in 2005 and 2006, and once the recession hit, a lot of those people unfortunately had their homes foreclosed on,” Campion said. “So during and after the recession, folks were desperate and had to sell their homes for less than what they paid, and investors and savvy homebuyers snapped them up, often with the help of FHA loans. Now we’re in a situation where it’s the best of all worlds for sellers who bought homes back around 2012. The Tacoma market is so hot right now that those sellers are often able to earn six figures by selling average homes.”
Nine of the 10 metros with the biggest median home equity growth in dollars are in California, led by San Francisco ($741,000), San Jose ($669,000) and San Rafael ($604,000). Seattle ($364,000), is the only non-California metro on the list. For a full metro-level list of median home equity in 2012 and current median home equity, see the table at the end of this report.
Compared with the metros with the highest percent equity growth, these areas all started in 2012 with high home prices, and local homebuyers likely made much higher down payment—close to 20 percent. Since then, coastal California and Seattle have seen enormous growth in home values, which equates to huge dollar gains in equity.
We’ve provided the full list of metro areas used in this analysis below, with data points including total home equity growth, home equity growth for the typical homebuyer who bought in 2012 in both dollars and percentages and home value growth from 2012 to 2019 in both dollars and percentages. The table also notes home equity and home value in 2012 and 2019.
The table is sorted by home equity percent growth, from largest to smallest.
Methodology
This report is based on a Redfin analysis of the total home equity and median home equity earned from roughly 1.4 million homes sold across 138 markets in the U.S. any time in 2012. The total amount of equity earned nationally was calculated by adding up the equity on each home purchase in 2012. To be included in the data, metros must have had at least 1,500 sales in 2012. The 2012 equity is equal to the down payment used to purchase a home based on county records: The down payment is the difference between the price and the loan amount. The current equity was calculated in one of two ways: For homes that are still owned by the 2012 purchaser, the current equity is the difference between the homeowners’ outstanding loan balance and the home’s current Redfin estimate; for homes that have since been sold, the current equity is the difference between the homeowners’ outstanding loan balance and the home’s subsequent sale price (if a home as been sold more than once since 2012, we only took the first sale into account). Home value appreciation is calculated using the difference between the median home price in 2012 and either the actual sale price or the median Redfin estimate in September 2019.
