The Housing Market Is Stronger Than You Think
You've probably heard plenty of doom and gloom about the housing market lately. High rates. Stretched budgets. Headlines that make buying or selling sound like a terrible idea. But the data tells a very different story.
This isn't 2020 or 2021. It was never going to be. Those were the "unicorn years" – historic low mortgage rates, bidding wars on everything, homes flying off the market in days. That kind of market was a once-in-a-generation anomaly, not a baseline. So, when people compare today to that, of course it looks rough.
But compared to almost any other housing market in modern history? This one is holding up remarkably well.
One of the biggest reasons this market hasn't cracked is the financial strength of the American homeowner. According to Federal Reserve data, homeowner equity and mortgage debt were nearly identical in 2008. That means, if someone hit a rough patch, they had almost nothing to fall back on. That’s what made that crash so bad.
Today? Total homeowner equity across the country sits at $35 trillion – dwarfing total mortgage debt (see graph below):
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