Home equity held by homeowners age 62 and older reached an all-time high of $14.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, climbing 1.9% from the previous quarter.
The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) and data analytics platform RiskSpan released their quarterly report on senior-held home equity on Friday, which underscored “continued growth” for older homeowners who were already sitting on record levels of home equity.
“At a time when inflation pressures and the fear of outliving one’s retirement savings remain top concerns for retirees, home equity stands out as a powerful — yet often underutilized — financial resource,” said Steve Irwin, president of NRMLA.
The quarterly rise in senior-held equity was attributed to a 2% increase in senior-held home prices. The roughly $295 billion of equity they gained in the third quarter was partially offset by a “modest” 1% increase in senior-held mortgage debt, which totaled $22.8 billion.
Reverse mortgages enable homeowners age 62 and older to draw down their home equity without making monthly payments, though interest on the drawdown accrues. The balance is not due until the last borrower leaves the home, sells the home or passes away.
The NRMLA/RiskSpan Reverse Mortgage Market Index (RMMI), which tracks long-term trends in senior-held home equity to assess reverse mortgage market opportunity, rose to 511.99 in the third quarter, up from 502.47 in the prior quarter.
Senior-held home equity was around $4 trillion at its 2006 peak before the 2008 financial crisis. In the first quarter of 2020, senior-held home equity was around $7.54 trillion, according to NRMLA data, before pandemic-era distortions caused it to nearly double to $14.66 trillion over the next five years.
Total home equity was around $13.5 trillion in mid-2006, according to Federal Reserve data, putting the senior-held share near 30% of total homeowner equity. Fed data pegs total home equity around $34.4 trillion as of the third quarter of 2025, putting the senior-held share at around 42%.
Several market developments have caused senior-held home equity and share of total equity to spike over the past two decades, with profound effects on the broader housing market.
Homeowners are holding onto their properties for twice as long in 2025 as they typically would have pre-2008. The average time between a home’s purchase and its sale stretched to more than eight years in the second quarter of 2025, up from about four years in late 2004. The median age of a repeat homebuyer increased to 62 in 2025 as the median age of all homebuyers rose to 59, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Homeownership tenure has doubled over two decades of historically slow new-home construction following the 2008 financial crisis. These parallel trends have fueled a supply shortage that has made it increasingly less affordable for first-time homebuyers to access the market.
That supply shortage met surging purchase demand during the COVID-19 pandemic at the same time the market was awash with pandemic-related fiscal and monetary stimulus, causing home values to skyrocket. Struggling against mortgage rate lock-in effects and home prices many prospective homebuyers need to see fall, the market now awaits a “generational relay,” says title insurance giant First American Financial Corp., which the company expects to unfold gradually over coming decades.
“The latest release of the RMMI underscores the extraordinary level of housing wealth held by older Americans,” added Irwin in NRMLA’s report.
