Record $18 Trillion in Home Equity, and 813,000 Borrowers Who Owe More Than the House Is Worth

Two numbers came out of the same report on Monday. One of them is going to be everywhere this week. The other one is the one that matters if you bought a house in the last four years.

Intercontinental Exchange publishes something called the Mortgage Monitor every month. The August edition went out on August 10.

The Number That’s Going to Run Everywhere

American mortgage holders now hold $18 trillion in equity. That’s the most ever recorded, and it’s a second quarter 2026 figure.

Inside that total, ICE counts 47.5 million mortgage holders sitting on $11.7 trillion in tappable equity. Tappable means the piece you could borrow against and still leave 20 percent in the house. Averaged out across those 47.5 million, it’s about $212,000 apiece.

Prices are moving again too. Annual home price growth reached 1.5 percent in July, the fifth month in a row it picked up speed and the biggest single-month move since the middle of 2023.

All of that is accurate. It’s also an average, and an average doesn’t sit across the table from anybody.

The Other Number, in the Same Release

Roughly 813,000 borrowers owe more than their house is worth. That count is up 44 percent from a year ago.

That’s a national count, so nobody should read it as a Florida figure. But ICE says where it’s concentrated, and there are two states on that list. Texas and Florida, because that’s where prices have come down furthest from their peak.

It says who, too. FHA and VA borrowers, and people who bought between 2022 and 2025.

That tracks once you say it out loud. Somebody who bought in Jacksonville in 2023 with an FHA loan and 3.5 percent down started with almost no cushion. Prices ran hard, then flattened, and the first few years of any mortgage payment go mostly to interest rather than principal. There was never much equity built up to absorb a dip.

So two houses on the same street can land in different halves of the same report. Same street. Different closing year, different loan.

Being Underwater Doesn’t Do Anything Until You Sell

This is the part that gets lost. Owing more than the house is worth is not a default. Nobody calls the loan over it, nothing gets reported, and if you’re staying put and paying, it’s a number on paper.

It shows up when the house has to sell.

A normal closing pays the mortgage, the closing costs and the commission out of the sale price. When the house is worth less than the loan, that math doesn’t reach. There’s nothing there to pay any of it with.

That’s what a short sale is. The lender agrees to take less than it’s owed and release its lien so the sale can close. It isn’t a program anybody signs up for. Most people find out they need one somewhere between listing the house and reading the first offer.

Whether a lender says yes is the lender’s call, on their own file, and I can’t tell you how yours would go.

Two Documents Are Worth Having Before You List, Not After

If you bought between 2022 and 2025 with a low down payment and selling is on the table, there are two pieces of paper that answer the question early.

The payoff statement from your servicer, which is what you actually owe today including interest and any fees, not the balance printed on last month’s statement. And a real net sheet, which is the sale price minus every line that comes out of it.

Put those side by side and you know which half of the ICE report you’re in. That’s a different situation than finding out after you’ve accepted an offer, because at that point you’ve got a buyer, a deadline and a gap.

Getting one of each costs nothing but a phone call and an hour. Whether you use them is up to you.

What a Bank Sale Looks Like on the Far End

Same release, different figure, and it’s about what happens after the bank already owns the house.

Buyers of bank-owned property paid 27.5 percent below comparable sales in June. That’s one of the widest gaps measured in more than two decades. ICE says the widest discounts against each market’s own history are turning up in Florida, Texas, California and the Mountain West, while adding that there still aren’t many of these properties out there to buy.

That’s a discount to comparable sales. Not to an estimate, not to a Zestimate, to what similar houses actually traded for.

Sit with what that means for the person who used to own it. Whatever the house brings on the far side of a foreclosure is what gets applied to the debt, and 27.5 percent under comps means a lot less gets applied. Florida is a recourse state, so what happens to a leftover balance after that comes down to the paperwork and the judgment. That’s an attorney’s question, and I’m not one.

Where This Leaves You

If you’ve got equity, this report is good news and you can take it as such.

If you closed in the last four years with a small down payment, you’re in a group that grew 44 percent in twelve months, and that has nothing to do with anything you did wrong. Falling behind, or being short on a payoff, is usually life landing hard on somebody who was fine a year ago.

The options in front of somebody who’s short aren’t complicated to list, even though none of them are pleasant. Stay and keep paying and wait for the gap to close. Bring cash to the table at closing. Ask the servicer about a modification. Ask the lender to take less through a short sale. Hand the house back through a deed in lieu. Or let it run to foreclosure and deal with what’s on the other side.

Each one costs something different, and the tax and credit pieces of that decision belong to a CPA and an attorney rather than to me. What I can tell you is how each one behaves in an actual closing, because that’s the mechanics of a sale and that’s my end of it.

Jacksonville is where I’m licensed and short sales are most of what I work. If you’re reading this somewhere else, a Florida license stops at the state line, so those go back out through the SFR referral network to somebody licensed where you are.

Questions are free and I’d rather answer one early than late. JimArmstrong904@gmail.com, or (904) 671-4161 if you’d rather talk.

Jim Armstrong, REALTOR, Momentum Realty, SFR (Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource) certified. This is general information, not legal, tax, or financial advice.

Momentum Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender.