> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.mortgagemomradio.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Should You Sell Right Now? What Your Home Equity Is Actually Worth - URL: https://www.mortgagemomradio.com/should-you-sell-right-now-what-your-home-equity-is-actually-worth/ - Published: 2023-08-16T21:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-04T17:33:51.000Z - Description: 68.7% of American homeowners are mortgage-free or hold at least 50% equity, and inventory is running at half a normal market. Debbie explains why selling releases more equity than a cash-out refinance ever will — and walks through her own move, sold in one day. - Author: Deborah Marcoux - Tags: Podcast, Mortgage Mom Radio, #episode-backfill Mortgage Mom Radio • Live show from Wednesday, August 16, 2023 • 55 minutes • Hosted by Debbie Marcoux, NMLS #237926 Most homeowners who want to move aren't stuck on the house — they're stuck on the rate they'd give up. This show is for them. Debbie walks through the equity data (nearly seven in ten American homeowners are mortgage-free or halfway there), explains why a sale releases far more of your equity than a cash-out refinance ever will, and tells the story of her own move: sold in one day, multiple offers, debt paid off, and a mortgage payment that landed roughly where it started. ## Key takeaways - **American homeowners are sitting on a tremendous amount of equity.** **68.7%** have either paid off their mortgage entirely or hold at least 50% equity. Nearly **half** of all mortgaged properties are formally “equity rich” — loan balances no more than half the home's value — and that share rose in **45 of the 50 states** in the second quarter. - **Selling releases 100% of your equity. A cash-out refinance never does.** There's always a cap on how much a lender will let you take out. When you sell, you get all of it, minus closing and seller costs — which is usually far less than what the cash-out limit would have held back. - **The move that actually works is equity plus debt payoff.** Take part of the equity for a larger down payment, use another part to clear credit cards, car loans, personal loans, student loans, IRS debt. Even if the new mortgage payment is higher, wiping out every other monthly obligation usually leaves you in a better cash-flow position than you were in before. - **Debbie did it herself, weeks before this show.** She sold, bought, cashed out equity, paid off a pile of debt, put a substantial down payment on the new home — and her mortgage is roughly what it was before. Her house was on the market **one day**, got multiple offers, and sold at full asking, significantly above the last comparable sale in the neighborhood. - **Selling into this inventory shortage is the whole advantage.** Supply is down roughly **10%** from the same week a year earlier, and a year earlier was already low — roughly half the inventory of a normal market. Buyer traffic is still strong. When rates eventually fall, listings flood back and your home competes with all of them. - **Home values turned back up.** The nationwide median home value rose **10%** in the second quarter to an all-time high of **$350,000**, after falling 7% over the prior three quarters. The correction people were waiting for came in at about 10%, and it's already reversing. - **Very few people are underwater.** Just **2.8%** of mortgaged homes — one in 36 — were seriously underwater, the lowest since at least 2019\. Nothing like 2008. - **Don't buy on the assumption of a rescue refinance.** Debbie's own read is that rates may not reach a level worth refinancing into until the **end of 2024 or early 2025**. Buy a payment you can carry now; treat the refinance as upside, not as the plan. ## Chapters - 01:00Today's topic: what your equity can actually do - 06:00Why homeowners who want to move are staying put - 07:00What equity is, and how fast it grew - 08:00Half the inventory of a normal housing market - 18:0068.7% of homeowners are mortgage-free or halfway there - 19:00Why selling releases more equity than a cash-out refinance - 20:00Three ways sellers are using their equity - 23:00Is now the right time to sell? - 24:00Debbie's own move: one day on the market - 28:00Q&A: what are mortgage rates right now? - 32:00Q&A: why doesn't good credit qualify me for down payment assistance? - 37:00The equity report: 49% equity rich, 45 of 50 states improving - 43:00Who should stay put — and who shouldn't - 44:00Buyers: what waiting has already cost you - 46:00When a refinance might actually be worth it - 48:00Wrap-up and how to catch the next live show ## Questions answered on this show ### “What are current mortgage interest rates?” The honest answer is a range, not a number, and here's why Debbie won't advertise one: every loan type, every credit score, every down payment, and every property type — single family, condo, manufactured, two-to-four unit — prices differently. Quoting 3.99% in a commercial and then telling you it's actually seven isn't marketing she's willing to do. The range as of this show runs from about **6.5% to as high as 8.5% or 9%**. FHA and VA, being government programs, typically price below conventional — in the **high 6s**. A jumbo loan, above the county loan limits, runs around **7% to 7.5%**. A self-employed borrower qualifying on bank statement deposits rather than tax returns is around **8.5%**. An investor buying a rental with no income documentation, qualified purely on whether the rents cover the mortgage, lands in the **9%** range. Call with your actual scenario — score, down payment, property type, how you document income — and you'll get a realistic number to plug into the calculators. ### “Why is it that the better my credit, the less assistance I get? I'm a first-time buyer and I don't qualify for down payment assistance.” It has nothing to do with credit. A higher score gets you a better rate and *more* programs, not fewer. What disqualifies most people from down payment assistance is **income**. Those programs are written for low-to-moderate income earners who can't realistically save a down payment and closing costs, so they carry income limits. Two things worth knowing. First, there are first-time buyer loans with low down payments that have no income test at all — those are a different thing from down payment assistance. Second, while the *majority* of down payment assistance programs have income limits, some do not. Which programs you can reach depends on the state, county and city you're buying in, and there are many programs from many different entities, not one national one. It's worth a conversation to find the one you actually fit. ## The market by the numbers (week of August 16, 2023 — averages, not quotes) - Homeowners who are mortgage-free or hold at least 50% equity: **68.7%** - Mortgaged properties classified equity rich in Q2 2023: **49%**, up from 47% in Q1 — the highest in at least four years, improving in **45 of 50 states** - Seriously underwater (balances at least 25% above value): **2.8%**, or one in 36 — down from 3.0% the prior quarter and 2.9% a year earlier, and the lowest since at least 2019 - Nationwide median home value: up **10%** in Q2 to an all-time high of **$350,000**, after a 7% drop over the prior three quarters - For-sale inventory: down roughly **10%** from the same week a year earlier — roughly half a normal market's supply - Conventional and government rate range: **6.5%** to **9%** depending on program, score, down payment and property type - FHA and VA: **high 6s** • Jumbo: **7–7.5%** • Bank statement (self-employed): **\~8.5%** • Investor, rents-only qualifying: **\~9%** *Your rate depends on FICO score, property type, loan balance, and loan purpose. These are national conforming averages for context, not a quote.* ### Find out what your equity could actually do Call [844-935-3634](tel:8449353634) (844-WE-LEND-4), [start an application](https://www.mortgagemomradio.com/apply/), or run your numbers with the [mortgage calculators](https://www.mortgagemomradio.com/tools/). Get the weekly rate rundown in the [newsletter](https://www.mortgagemomradio.com/newsletter/). Full transcript (lightly edited for clarity) *Auto-generated captions cleaned for readability. Sponsor messages, commercial breaks, and repeated housekeeping have been trimmed; licensing information appears at the bottom of this page.* ### Today's topic: your equity Welcome to Mortgage Mom Radio. I am Debbie Marcoux, I am the Mortgage Mom, and every week I bring you a new topic about everything real estate and mortgage. Today I'm talking to my homeowners. We're going to talk about equity — what you can do with it and what it means for you. Home values are up, and they're once again on the rise. Should you be buying right now in this market? Should you be holding out? What's going on with the market, how many listings are out there, how are our inventory levels? We're going to go through all of that. This is an interactive show. If you want to participate, put your questions right into the stream on YouTube or Facebook — I'll read them out loud and answer them. ### Why homeowners who want to move are staying put Here's how the article I sent out to my newsletter subscribers this week opens: if you're a homeowner, you might be torn on whether or not to sell your house right now. Maybe that's because you don't want to take on a higher mortgage rate on your next home. We've talked about that, and it's real. Many homeowners in today's market would love to sell and buy something new, but they're holding out because they don't like what the rate would be on the new purchase and they don't like where the new monthly payment would land. If that's your biggest hurdle, understanding your equity may be exactly what you need to feel more comfortable making your move. ### What equity is, and how fast it grew Equity is the current value of your home minus what you owe on the loan. Recently that equity has been growing far faster than you may expect. Over the last few years home prices rose dramatically and gave your equity a very quick, very big boost. While the market has started to normalize, there's still an imbalance between the number of homes available for sale and the number of buyers looking to buy. It's because homes are in such high demand that prices are back on the rise today. That's why we're doing this show. Home prices are back on the rise. They are not slowing down. We had a minute there where things came down and we saw some price decreases — about a 10% correction — and now prices are going up again. We're seeing multiple offers again, and that's because of the imbalance of homes available on the market. ### Half the inventory of a normal housing market So I pulled a second article. It's titled “There's Only Half the Inventory of a Normal Housing Market Today.” Wondering if it still makes sense to sell your house right now? The short answer is yes — especially when you consider how few homes there are for sale. You may have heard inventory is low, but you may not fully realize just how low, or why that's a perk when you go to sell. Compared to the same week last year, supply is down roughly **10%**. And it was already considered low at that time. In 2019 we had a lower inventory level, but that was the closest to normal we'd had. In 2020 inventory dropped a little lower, then started to improve as interest rates fell very low and more people made the moves they wanted. In 2022 inventory was low and we were all complaining there wasn't enough. And now in 2023 inventory is even lower. ### Buyer traffic is still strong Here's a third one, because it's nice to hear this in multiple places rather than from one person. Home buyers are still more active than usual. Even though the housing market is no longer experiencing the frenzy that was so characteristic of the last couple of years, that doesn't mean today's market is at a standstill. Buyer traffic is still strong. The ShowingTime Showing Index measures how much buyers are touring homes. You can't see the graph I'm looking at, but there's clear seasonality in real estate: in normal years, buyer activity peaked in the first half of each year during the spring home buying season and slowed as the year came to a close. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, that trend was disrupted as the market responded to the uncertainty. From there we entered what the piece calls the unicorn years of housing — record low mortgage rates and sky-high buyer demand. Similar seasonal patterns still existed, just at much higher levels. Now look at 2023\. Traffic is down from the previous month and lower than the peaks of the unicorn years, but what's happening isn't a steep drop-off in demand. It's a slow return toward normal seasonality. So: far less inventory, still real buyer demand, your home holding a lot of equity, and property values on the rise. What can you do with that equity? ### 68.7% of homeowners are mortgage-free or halfway there Back to the first article. Americans are sitting on tremendous equity: **68.7%** have paid off their mortgage or have at least **50%** equity. Think about how much your home has increased in value. If you've got 50% equity sitting in that home, that's quite a bit — and nearly seven in ten Americans have at least that. You need to learn how to leverage it. Many of you have called with credit card debt, personal loans, car loans, student loans coming back into repayment, taxes owed to the IRS. You're looking for a way to take care of all of it, but you don't want to give up the mortgage you have. You like your rate, you don't want to refinance, you don't want to pull cash out. ### Why selling releases more equity than a cash-out refinance Here's a piece people miss. When you do a cash-out refinance, you can *never* get 100% of the equity out of your home — you're limited by how much we're allowed to lend against the property. If you sell that property, you get 100% of the equity you have available, minus your closing costs and seller's fees. That's a lot less than what the cash-out limit would have held back. ### Three ways sellers are using their equity Once you sell, you can use your equity for your next purchase. It could be some, if not all, of what you'll need for the next down payment. It may even be enough to allow a considerably larger down payment, so you don't have to finance as much. And if you've been in your current house for years, you may have built up enough to pay all cash — in which case you don't have to worry about today's mortgage rates at all. I see all three. We have a lot of people moving to another state, to lower-cost areas, selling and paying all cash with no financing whatsoever. We have others putting far more money down than they thought they'd be able to, which keeps their monthly payment quite similar to what they're already used to even with elevated rates — and when rates do come down, they have the opportunity to refinance and drop that payment further. And we have many people taking a significant portion of the equity for the down payment and using another portion to pay off debt. They're getting rid of the recurring monthly burden they couldn't clear because they didn't have the cash. Once those debts are paid off, the relief in monthly cash flow is such that the increased payment on the new mortgage is *still* lower than everything combined today: the old mortgage plus the car payments plus the student loans plus the credit cards plus the personal loans plus the IRS. Even if your mortgage payment goes up, you're very likely in a much better monthly cash flow position. ### Is now the right time to sell? Right now the market has very little inventory — the lowest levels I've seen in many, many years. We have more buyer demand than we have homes on the market. Many homes are going over asking with multiple offers, again, even with elevated interest rates. So if you're a seller who wants to list right now, the opportunity to sell quickly, at a fantastic price, and cash out that home is an amazing one. As rates start to come back down and more people feel it's time to sell, buy, move and get a better rate, more properties come to market — which means far more competition for your listing than you'd have today. ### Debbie's own move Being completely transparent with all of you: I just did this. I sold my home, we bought another home, I cashed out equity, I paid off a bunch of debt, I put a really nice-sized down payment on the new property — and my mortgage is still roughly the same as it was previously. It worked out fantastically. I was on the market for **one day** and I got multiple offers, and I sold my home at the full value I was asking, which was significantly more than what the last home in the neighborhood sold for. We literally moved a month ago and sold the home two months ago. I can talk to you about articles, but as somebody who just went through it: that's the experience I had. I'm feeling a lot less pressure. I'm a lot more relaxed. I'm smiling again. Getting that monkey off your back, getting those debts paid and being able to move forward and start fresh — it was a great opportunity, and one I think a lot of you aren't considering. ### Q&A: what are mortgage rates right now? Diosa asks: *“What are the current mortgage interest rates?”* Fabulous question, and one I get every day — but it's very difficult to answer, because every loan type, every borrower with a different credit score, every borrower with a different down payment, every property type — single family, manufactured, condominium, two, three or four unit — gets a different rate. That's why you'll never hear me run a commercial that says “call now, 3.99%” and then you call and find out rates are seven. Every person's rate is individual to that person, and there's just no way to market something that doesn't apply to everybody. I don't feel right about it. But rates today range anywhere from about **6.5%** up as high as **8.5% or 9%**. That 9% end is somebody not showing typical conventional paperwork — an investor buying a rental who can't or won't show tax returns, where we're qualifying solely on the property itself and whether the rents cover the mortgage. If you're self-employed on a bank statement loan, qualifying on deposits rather than tax returns, you could be around **8.5%**. FHA and VA are government programs and typically yield a lower rate than conventional — those are in the **high 6s** right now. A jumbo loan, above the county loan limits for the area, could be around **7% to 7.5%**. If you want to run numbers yourself, use the calculators on the website or the tools app. Email, text or call us with your scenario — what you think your credit score is, how much you have for a down payment, whether you can qualify with pay stubs and W-2s or you're self-employed — and we'll give you a good average rate to plug in. ### Q&A: down payment assistance and credit Diosa also asks: *“Why is it that the better the credit, the less assistance? I'm a first-time home buyer and don't qualify for the home buyer assistance. It's frustrating.”* It has nothing to do with your credit. The higher your credit score, the better you do on rate, and the more loan programs are available to you. Your credit is not what's disqualifying you from down payment assistance. There are first-time buyer loans with low down payments that have nothing to do with income. But *down payment assistance* programs are pretty restrictive on how much you can earn. They're looking for the low-to-moderate income earner who doesn't have the opportunity to make enough money to save what they'd need for a down payment and closing costs, and they're trying to help that person get into homeownership. I know that sounds terrible, and I agree — I'm just relaying how it works and their reasoning behind it. Even at moderate to higher income it can be very difficult to save a down payment and closing costs, and we understand that. So here's the important part: the *majority* of down payment assistance programs have income limits, but there are programs that do not. Which ones you can use depends on the county, the city and the state you're buying in. There isn't one program out there — there are numerous programs from many different entities. We just need to talk through your scenario to figure out which one works for you. Keep the questions coming. Every time I answer a question for you, I'm answering it for many. ### The equity report Here's another article, from July 27th of this year: “Equity Improves for U.S. Homeowners as Housing Market Boom Shows Signs of Revival.” ATTOM, a leading curator of land, property and real estate data, released its second quarter 2023 U.S. Home Equity and Underwater Report, which shows that **49%** of mortgaged residential properties in the United States were considered equity rich in the second quarter — meaning the combined estimated amount of loan balances secured by those properties was no more than half of their estimated market values. That ties back to what I said earlier about 68.7% of homeowners either having the mortgage completely paid off or holding at least 50% equity. The portion of mortgaged homes that were equity rich increased from **47%** in the first quarter of 2023 to the highest point in at least four years, with home prices rebounding across the U.S. The level of equity-rich mortgage payers went up from the first quarter to the second quarter in **45 of the nation's 50 states**. So there will be some pockets that aren't seeing the same appreciation, and some pockets actually seeing declines — it truly depends on the state, the county, the city you're looking in. You might be seeing a different story than what I'm describing. But 45 of 50 states are seeing home prices rebound. The gains followed two straight quarterly drop-offs — that's the roughly 10% correction I mentioned — caused by a temporary slowdown that had threatened to end a decade-long run of price and equity growth. The second quarter upturn marked another sign of how the market shift has helped homeowners, as home seller profits also spiked. ### Only 2.8% are seriously underwater The report also shows that less than 3% of mortgaged homes in the U.S. — one in 36 — were considered seriously underwater in the second quarter of 2023\. That means a combined estimated balance of loans secured by the property of at least 25% *more* than the property's estimated value. So there are still people out there upside down in their home, but that number is very, very small compared to what we saw in 2007, 2008, 2009 during that meltdown. Just **2.8%** of mortgaged homes were seriously underwater in the second quarter, also the lowest point since at least 2019 — down from 3.0% in the prior quarter and 2.9% in the second quarter of 2022. As ATTOM's chief executive, Rob Barber, put it: equity levels were high even during the recent downturn and now they're going back up and better than ever. It's well worth noting that the market remains in flux and the recent improvement could easily be temporary. Lots of changing forces are at work affecting whether boom times are really back, especially amid a recent increase in mortgage rates. But with the 2023 peak buying season still underway, homeowners can reasonably expect their household balance sheets to grow a bit more in the near future. Nationwide, the median home value shot up **10%** in the second quarter to yet another all-time high of **$350,000**, after dropping 7% over the prior three quarters. ### Who should stay put — and who shouldn't You're hearing solid data, over and over: we're on the rebound, home values are going up again, supply is very short, demand is real, and homeowners have a ton of equity. That's a fantastic opportunity to sell and cash out. And as that article said, we don't know what tomorrow brings. Things can shift in a heartbeat. If property values decline, your equity declines, and the amount of cash you could take out of your property is less. So right now is a good time to strike if you've been thinking about selling and sitting on the fence. Here's the honest other side. If you're a homeowner with a super low interest rate, no debt, and no rush to move — by all means stay put. Stick it out. See where the market goes. If you sell today and take a new mortgage at a higher rate, maybe that doesn't make sense for you. But for many of you it absolutely does, and striking while the iron is hot is the best time to do it. What we need to talk about is your specific math: how much equity you have, what price home you'd be moving into, how much of that equity you'd put down, whether your new mortgage balance would actually drop below what you owe today. Can you take some of the equity and pay off debt, get that relief, then use the rest for the down payment and closing costs? Do you end up in a better monthly cash flow position? Because that's what it's all about. We all earn money, we all make payments to live, and the goal is getting cash flow to the lowest level we can. ### Buyers: what waiting has cost you Buyers, many of you have been on the fence a long time, waiting for the market to drop out from under itself and for property values to come crashing down. At this point it doesn't appear that's going to happen. We saw the slowdown, we saw values start to come down, and now we're seeing the rebound. So take a minute. If you had bought a home when you first started thinking about buying — what were home values at that point? What could you have bought that home for? What is that home worth today, and what will you pay for it now? Putting that goal on hold has cost you how much? How much longer are you going to hold out before you're completely priced out and never become a homeowner? ### When a refinance might actually be worth it I want to circle back to rates. I'm not going to tell you they're coming down by the end of this year. I'm not going to tell you they're coming down in 2024. My personal opinion — the Mortgage Mom, from doing this as many years as I have, watching the articles week in and week out, watching the stock market and mortgage-backed securities and everything unfolding globally — I don't know that we'll see rates at a place that would be worth refinancing a mortgage you took today until maybe the end of 2024, maybe even the beginning of 2025\. I could be absolutely wrong. Two weeks ago on the show I said 14 to 18 months, which is about the same window. So the most important thing to factor in right now: sellers, if you sell, make sure you're in a position to afford the payment you'd be taking on today. Buyers, especially first-time buyers, take a payment you can afford monthly — not one that depends on rates coming down and a refinance making you comfortable. Get comfortable now. Then when rates come down, you refinance, you get an even lower payment, and you benefit even more. ### The referral network One more thing worth knowing. We have a network of real estate agents we've worked with for many years, in many states. If you're a seller looking to sell or a buyer looking to buy, we can refer you to one of them. **We do not take a referral fee in any way.** These are people we trust to work hard for you and do the job right. All of the agents on our panel have offered discounts to sellers and buyers — help with closing costs, with the seller's cost of selling, with commission fees. Many will give a credit that goes directly back to the buyer through the closing of the loan toward closing costs, which can be significant savings if you have enough for the down payment but not the closing costs. And if you're doing two transactions, a discount on the commission for the sale plus a credit toward closing costs on the purchase is huge. ### Wrap-up If you want to know when I go live so you can jump on and ask questions, text the word LIVE to 844-935-3634 — that's 844-WE-LEND-4 — and you'll get one text a week. Same number to call the office, and you can book a free phone consultation right on the website at mortgagemomradio.com. You need a plan. You need to know the numbers and what you're looking at before you can execute anything. With no plan comes no movement — you'll never execute, you'll never finish, and the goal will never be obtained. I'll be back next Wednesday with a whole other topic. Last week we talked about 1031 exchanges and DSTs, for saving on the tax implications of selling an investment property when you're not quite ready to buy another one — if you've never heard of that, go back and watch the show on YouTube or listen by podcast. Have a fabulous rest of your week, and I'll see you Wednesday. Debbie Marcoux is licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act, NMLS ID #237926, and additionally licensed in AZ (0941504), FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, NV, NC, OR, TN, TX, and WA. Rates and figures discussed were current as of the air date of August 16, 2023, reflect national conforming averages, and are not an offer of credit or a rate quote. Debbie Marcoux is not a financial advisor; consult qualified professionals about your individual situation.