Older adult-held home equity increased for the second consecutive quarter, according to the latest quarterly release from the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association and data analytics firm RiskSpan, published Friday. The data show that older adults’ collective home equity grew by an estimated $178.4 billion in the third quarter to a record of $13.08 trillion.
“After starting 2023 with a reduction, the RMMI [Reverse Mortgage Market Index] quickly settled into a pattern of increases once more in Q2 2023,” an article about the report noted.
Homeowners aged 62 or more years had seen their housing equity fall slightly in the fourth quarter of 2022 to an overall adjusted level of $12.39 trillion, decreasing again in the first quarter of 2023 by 1.3% or $185 billion. Older adult-held equity rebounded in the second quarter of 2023 by $820 billion to $12.69 trillion
The RMMI increased in the third quarter to 457.36 from 444.16 in the previous quarter. This marked the highest level the index has reached since it began publication in the year 2000, according to NRMLA.
NRMLA President Steve Irwin noted that, according to a recent study from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and supported with funding from the National Investment Center for Senior Housing & Care, almost a third of today’s older adults are “cost-burdened” and spending almost a third of their monthly income on housing costs.
The report “concluded that the United States is ill-equipped to provide adequate housing and supportive services to the 17 million households that will be headed by a person aged 80 and over by the year 2040,” Irwin said. “That same report noted that leveraging home equity could provide a potential solution to cover the costs of care.”
