A lot of people are asking the same thing right now: “Is it even a good time to sell?” And the truth may come as a bit of a surprise... For many homeowners, the answer is a strong yes . Why? Because of one major factor working in your favor: your equity. Odds are, if you’ve lived in your home for a while, you know you have significant equity. But how much are we really talking about? The number might just change everything about your next move. The Hidden Wealth of Homeownership Here’s how it works. When you own a home, you build up something called equity . Each time you make a mortgage payment, you’re chipping away at your loan balance. And that helps your ownership stake in your home grow. At the same time, home values typically rise – which drives up the overall value of your home. When you put those two things together, you’re building wealth automatically, month after month, year after year. And that combo can add up to real dollars that can make a real difference in your move. That’s especially true if you’ve lived in your house for a while, which many homeowners have. According to Realtor.com : “Nearly half (45.2%) of today’s homeowners have lived in their home for more than 15 years, and 1 in 4 for over 25 years.” If that’s you, just imagine what 15-25 years of payments + steady appreciation have done to your bottom line. It's time you see how your equity stacks up over time. What That Really Means in Dollars This chart uses research coming out of Realtor.com to show an estimate of how much equity homeowners have built up depending on when they bought. For each time frame, it takes the median-priced home and uses it as the baseline example. The numbers are shocking, too. According to the study, if you bought the average-priced home in... The mid-90s? You could be sitting on over $400,000 in equity now. The early 2000s? You could have over $330,000 , even with owning during the housing crash. In 2015? Even in that shorter 10-year time frame, many homeowners have already built nearly $285,000 in equity. 

One of the biggest homebuying advantages you can give yourself today is surprisingly simple: a flexible wish list. Think of it like this. Your wish list and your budget are the guardrails of your search. And when your budget needs to hold firm, there’s another lever you can pull. That’s seeing if you truly need all of your desired features. Because the truth is, a small compromise could be the difference between feeling stuck and getting the keys to your next home. The data shows more buyers are using that strategy to offset affordability hurdles in today’s market. A recent study from Cotality found most buyers (70%) ended up compromising on one or more items from their original wish list. But before they started searching, only 33% expected to compromise at all: