If you own your house, what kind of equity (in percentage terms) do you have roughly?

[Twiglett]

Just because we're talking about the housing market dropping and the potential re-emergence of negative equity I'm wondering what kind of exposure people have.

I'll start by saying we're bloody lucky in that we have something like 73% equity at a conservative valuation of current prices which means we could easily swallow a 25 - 35% market fall

what about you?

About 60% I would guess.

5x earnings

In a year it will be 90%, as part of the mortgage is an endowment, so will mature at a different time from the rest of the mortgage. Atm it is about 85%

That was at titchy

Difficult to say because there aren't many houses like ours locally and they rarely come onto the market...I'd say 65% equity but a whopper mortgage - 3x joint salary, affordable and fixed until 2012 - by which time hopefully the market will have settled itself down again.

We are about 65% equity and 35% mortgage I would say. So a fair way to go before we end up in negative and no need to move. Only realistic problem would be if interest rates became prohibitive but that would be the BofE base rate because we are on a tracker atm. Also our mortage is only about 1.25% x income.

Blimey, I'm surprised at all these high figures.

we're renting so can't answer.

That's a good point elliott - but there are so many variables aren;t there?

Whether one or both spouses work; whether either could continue to meet all outgoings if the other lost their job; how much savings the family has; how much would interest rates need to rise before you wipe out any disposable income each month etc etc.

We were REALLY lucky though as dh had a flat in the 'posh' part of our town, where the prices went up loads before the area we moved to shifted upwards. So we got in just in time. No way we could afford our house now. If we did the same move now, we would need to get a mortgage which was 5 or 6 times dh's current salary.

I have something like 25%
I moved wnd of last year to a smaller house in a more expensive area so even though I had 40% equity in my last place I have less now as I had to split some of the profit with my ex etc.

I think I am fairly lucky as I bought last year and I have a 3 year fixed rate. i just hope things get better within the next two and a half years.

sorry I'm working it out based on

amount of mortgage divided by current valuation of house x 100 to give percentage you're mortgaged

then taking 100% - the percentage you're mortgaged to give current equity percentage

60% mine

100% - thank god, as dh is being made redundant (again!!).

tell me about it claricebean In our defence we do have a fair bit of savings (earmarked for an extension at some point so house value will go up considerably when complete) and our salaries are likely to rise quite quickly over the next couple of years.

think we've got about 16% equity........that's based on what the house cost when it was bought 3 1/2yrs ago - have no idea of current market value, don't think it's gone up much....

I think the point I was trying to make was that 'exposure' or whether you are at risk in the current climate is really more about the affordability of your mortgage than the amount of equity you have.
I don't really view the equity I have as real money in the sense that I am 'losing' money if house prices fall, because the vast majority of it has come from the market rising rather than real money I have spent, iyswim. (I find that a comforting thought anyway!)

have just worked it out twig's way, and we have 63 % equity it would seem, based on mortgage divided by value x 100

so we could weather a lot before negative equity rears its head for us, but more of an issue about the monthly repayments when fixed rate expires...

Ours is a 60% mortgage, and is about the standard 3-times-combined-salary. We just about manage it. Any more would be a struggle.

Mind you, I know people who had 90-95% mortgages on small terraces which they bought in about 1994 (for 35-40K) which they have now paid off!! By "being careful" of course.

77.5 percent

We had a teeny tiny mortgage on last house, bought this one 6 years ago just at start of upturn in the market, reduce the mortgage by capital repayments annually

lulu .. sorry if your mortgage/valuex100 = 63% then you'll have 27% equity because you have to do the 100%-63% calculation too

or am I messing up on my maths?

you are probably right ! am crap at maths ! i reckoned it was about 35 % before you posted that caluclation , so you are probably right