The Asset Making Americans Rich: Why Owners Have a 43-to-1 Edge
The wealth gap between homeowners and renters in the U.S. has never been wider.
The typical homeowner now has a net worth that's 43 times greater than that of the average renter, according to an analysis of federal data by the National Association of Realtors. Net worth is a measure of total wealth that looks at the value of assets (such as homes) and liabilities (such as debts).
In 2025, the net worth of homeowners is $430,000 on average, compared to the $10,000 net worth of renters. Since before the pandemic, the net worths of both homeowners and renters have seen considerable gains. But as the net worths of both groups have grown, so has the wealth gap.
Comparing 2019 to today, renters have grown their wealth by 37%, while homeowners got about 46% wealthier. Zooming into 2022 tells a different story. Between then and now, renters' wealth has actually shrunk by 3.8% — down from $10,400 — while the net worth of homeowners grew 8.5% — up from $396,200.
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What’s behind the widening wealth gap?
One reason why homeowners are so much wealthier than renters is due to the arithmetic. Since net worth considers the value of not only how much you earn but also the value of what you own, homes play an outsized role in computing the wealth of the typical American.
And lately, home values have been soaring.
"Many homeowners have been able to ride the wave of home price appreciation over the last five years, which has added to the homeowner net worth substantially," Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst for Realtor.com, said in the analysis last week. "Rapid price appreciation also gave existing homeowners the opportunity to cash in on home equity and level up into a larger or more desirable home."
Renters, on the other hand, largely got hit with higher rents.
A 2023 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia suggests that rising rents push renters further into debt and delinquency because more of their earnings are going toward basic living expenses, making other purchases likelier to go on credit cards. And debt loads negatively affect one’s net worth, which is consistent with the 3.8% decline in wealth for renters since 2022.
Turbocharged by the pandemic, the housing affordability crisis is worsening America's wealth gap by keeping people stuck as renters. Data from the New York Federal Reserve shows that 71.5% of renters would prefer to own a home. (Less than 15% preferred renting.) But renters are faced with a litany of barriers: rent increases that keep them from saving, home price growth that is far outpacing wage growth, and mortgage rates that have been flirting with 7% since late 2022.
These issues are weighing heavily on renters, dashing many of their hopes of ever being able to own a home.
For a decade, the NY Fed has been asking renters about their probability of owning a home "at some point in the future." The latest reading, from February, is the lowest on record. The typical renter pegged their chances of the American Dream coming true at just 33.9%.
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