More homeowners in Idaho, Boise are now ‘equity rich.’ This U.S. ranking may surprise you
If you own a home in the Boise area, you could be building quite a nest egg — by doing nothing.
The steep rise in housing prices in the Treasure Valley and Idaho has been well-documented. For potential buyers, that can make ownership unattainable. For people who already were homeowners, it can mean gaining significant equity.
Among 106 metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S. with a population greater than 500,000, only one had a higher percentage of “equity rich” properties in the fourth quarter of 2021 than Boise, according to statistics from ATTOM, a provider of real estate and property data.
In that quarter, 70.6% of properties in Austin, Texas, were classified as equity rich. In Boise, 67.3% were. The rest of the top five were San Jose (66.1%), Spokane (64.1%) and Salt Lake City (64%).
Across the 50 states and Washington D.C., Idaho ranked No. 1, with 66.7% of homes qualifying as equity rich, just ahead of Vermont (64.8%) and Utah (62.5%).
“The key factor driving this position is home values,” ATTOM Chief Product Officer Todd Teta said in an email.
ATTOM defines properties as “equity rich” when the combined estimated amount of loan balances secured by those properties is no greater than 50% of their estimated market value. Equity is the value of the home minus how much someone owes on the mortgage.
According to ATTOM’s data, the median price of a single-family home in the Boise metro area increased from $202,446 in 2016 to $430,438 in 2021. That gave Boise the highest five-year increase among 107 metros analyzed, Teta said.
In 2019, the median home price was $281,250, meaning there’s been a 53% jump in just two years.
“Those gains have pushed the estimated value of homes up in general across the area, widening the gap between what homeowners owe on their mortgages and what their homes are worth,” Teta said. “As the gap increases, so does home equity.”
In the third quarter of 2019, as far back as ATTOM’s data goes, 33.9% of properties in the Boise metro area were equity rich, ranking 14th in the country. In the fourth quarter of 2019, that percentage rose to 34.6%, and it has just shot up since. By the fourth quarter of 2020, it was 44.1%, ranking fifth in the country behind San Jose (65.7%), San Francisco (57.5%), Los Angeles (51.7%) and San Diego (44.5%).
Just outside of Boise, Valley County, which includes McCall, ranked second among all counties nationally in the fourth quarter of 2021, with 79.4% of properties being equity rich. Only Dukes County in Massachusetts, which includes Martha’s Vineyard, topped Valley County, with 80.5% of equity-rich homes.
Teta also pointed to the strong job markets in the Boise metro area and Idaho as a factor in its high ranking.
“High employment equates to more jobs, which means more homeowners with more money to keep paying their mortgages, further increasing home equity,” he said.
ATTOM’s data analyzed home equity by ZIP code, too. These locations in the Boise metropolitan statistical area, all in the city of Boise itself, had the highest percentage of equity-rich homes in the fourth quarter of 2021:
- 83712 — 78.1%
- 83702 — 76.5%
- 83703 — 75.7%
These ZIP codes in the Boise metropolitan statistical area had the lowest percentage of equity-rich homes:
- 83644 (Middleton) — 55.3%
- 83687 (Nampa) — 56.0%
- 83651 (Nampa) — 57.2%
Boise equity gains outpace national numbers
Homeowners in the Boise metro area who bought a typical, existing single-family home 10 years ago had gained $378,600 in equity as of the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors. That ranked 15th in the country.
Nationally, homeowners who bought their home 10 years ago are likely to have accumulated $225,000 in equity if they bought and sold at the median price at the time, based on the Realtors’ data. Ten years ago, the median price across the country was $169,000; it was $363,100 in the third quarter of 2021.
Those who bought their typical existing home in the Boise metro area five years ago have earned about $288,500.
By “typical,” the National Association of Realtors means a home at the median price. Per those calculations, the median price of an existing home in the Boise metro area in the fourth quarter of each of these years was:
- 1991 — $78,700
- 2006 — $209,500
- 2011 — $117,900
- 2016 — $203,400
- 2021 — $473,800
This story was originally published February 25, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
