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(Bloomberg) -- U.S. homeowners are sitting on nearly $19 trillion in home equity -- but most won’t be able to tap it during the current recession.
The lucky ones who already set up credit lines have $577 billion at their disposal, according to economists at the New York Federal Reserve.
For everyone else, lending standards are tightening and that potential windfall is closing down.
“There are some lenders that are shutting off their home equity lines and are really increasing the pricing for cash-out loans,” said Logan Mohtashami, senior loan manager at AMC Lending Group in Irvine, California. “It is problematic for those that might have equity, but don’t have a home equity line.”
About 14.5 million U.S. homeowners out of 54.7 million total were considered equity-rich in the first quarter of 2020 -- meaning the amount of loans secured by those properties was 50% or less of their estimated market value, according to property data firm ATTOM Data Solutions.
The impact of the coronavirus pandemic is not reflected in the data, cautioned Todd Teta, chief product officer with ATTOM: “With the potential for home values to fall, there is a significant chance that equity levels could drop over the coming months while underwater levels rise.”
Still, the data show which metro areas may be more resilient.
Increases in home equity across the U.S. “is one of the reasons why I don’t think you’re going to see a foreclosure crisis,” said Mohtashami. “People are staying in their homes longer and they have a much much higher equity than before and there wasn’t any cash-out boom in this cycle like it was from 2002 to 2005.”
The top five large metro areas with the highest shares of equity-rich properties were all in California last quarter. In addition, 48 of the top 50 equity-rich zip codes were in the Golden State, including the wealthy counties in and around San Francisco.
Meanwhile, Rust Belt cities like Toledo and Cleveland in Ohio have some of the highest levels of underwater mortgages, worth 125% or more of the property’s market value
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.