The $11T home equity market is no longer "sleepy", it’s a battlefield. In 2026, banks win by shifting from parcel-centric to owner-centric data. Using Owner Link™ and PIM, lenders gain a 360-degree view of a borrower’s wealth, enabling proactive plays like auto refis and debt consolidation. By spotting hidden risks (like HOA liens) early, banks can rescue borrowers and protect assets. To win, you must understand the person, not just the property.
As we come to the end of the Q1, hopes for a meaningful drop in first mortgage rates haven’t materialized. Instead, home equity products continue to be where both the action and the competition is.
In 2025, nearly $280 billion worth of home equity loans were originated, a 5% year-over-year gain, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Most observers expect this trend to continue this year as American homeowners extract a portion of their $11 trillion of tappable equity, without surrendering historically low first mortgage rates.
As you’d expect, this is a significant opportunity for lenders who understand the modern homeowner’s balance sheet—and who can move faster than the incumbents.
From margins to mainstream
For the better part of a decade, the home equity market was a relative quiet sector of the mortgage industry. During the low-interest-rate bonanza of the 2010s and early 2020s, cash-out refinances were the undisputed king of equity extraction. Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOCs) were largely treated as an afterthought by major depositories. In fact, some major money center banks suspended their home equity programs entirely in favor of refinances.
That era is over. Today, with first-lien rates anchoring millions of homeowners in place, home equity lines and loans have moved from the margins to the mainstream.
The shift has attracted a new class of competitors. Fintech lenders, like Figure and Aven, have revolutionized the origination process, leveraging algorithmic underwriting to cut origination times from 45 days down to five. Furthermore, these fintechs have redefined the product itself. They have successfully positioned home equity not just as a tool for home renovation, but as the ultimate, low-cost debt consolidation engine.
Meanwhile, IMBs are capturing an ever-larger share of the HELOC market, further eroding the depository institutions’ historic advantage. In fact, one of the nation’s largest non-bank lenders now claims the title of top home equity loan producer.
The rise of the Home Equity Investments (HEI)
Perhaps the most fascinating evolution in recent years is the reemergence of Home Equity Investments (HEIs). Unlike a HELOC or a cash-out refinance, HEIs are not loans; they are investment contracts. Companies like Hometap and Point provide homeowners with a lump sum of cash today in exchange for a percentage of the home’s future appreciation. With no interest rate and no monthly payment, HEIs have found a receptive audience among retirees on fixed incomes and borrowers whose credit profiles disqualify them from conventional products.
HEIs represent a fundamental broadening of the equity-extraction market. As this segment grows, banks that offer only traditional loan products risk losing not just transactions, but entire customer relationships.
The servicer's dilemma: The shift from parcel-centric to owner-centric
Although fintechs and HEI providers are spending millions to target equity-rich consumers, traditional banks and mortgage servicers still have a significant advantage: their existing customer relations. The question is: can these banks and lenders efficiently identify the best prospects within their servicing book and within their institutions? Reaching these customers before a fintech poaches them will require an understanding of their equity position and their overall financial balance sheet.
The historical problem for banks is that property insights have traditionally been parcel-centric; they could easily view a specific property's history, but not a specific individual's comprehensive ownership history across multiple assets and understanding all of the lending opportunities across those properties.
This is where the paradigm is shifting. By utilizing Owner Link™, a unique, persistent identifier assigned to individuals and businesses involved in property transactions, banks can finally connect disparate datasets. Think of Owner Link as a perpetual identifier for the property owner, providing an unprecedented, 360-degree view of their property transactions and lending history.
Leveraging PIM + Owner Link for ultimate cross-selling and risk mitigation
By combining the property-level insights of Portfolio Intelligence and Monitoring (PIM) with the human-level tracking of Owner Link, banks can execute highly targeted cross-sell campaigns—extending far beyond standard HELOCs.
Here are some of the ways banks can use this combined data approach to succeed in today’s fast-paced market:
1. Pinpoint tappable equity on specific assets: Once you know the customer's full portfolio via Owner Link, you can use PIM to drill down into the specific assets. PIM identifies the seniority, status, and security of all liens on a property. Using its equity analysis module, it calculates exactly how much usable equity is sitting in a property by factoring in all open liabilities.
2. Identify and rescue borrowers with hidden liabilities: (The HOA/Tax Lien Play) As inflation, rising real estate taxes, and insurance costs squeeze homeowner budgets—especially in states with soaring HOA fees and assessments—many borrowers who are current on their primary mortgages are falling behind on their local obligations. PIM’s Special Lien Analysis displays currently active involuntary liens, including property tax and HOA liens. Instead of waiting for a small HOA or tax debt to spiral into a foreclosure that threatens the bank's first-lien position, proactive servicers can use PIM 365 to monitor for these new liabilities. If an HOA or tax lien is threatening the property with equity, the bank might offer HELOC or cash-out refinance designed specifically to clear the distressed debt. This turns a major portfolio risk into a lucrative new origination, rescuing the borrower while protecting the bank's collateral.
3. Map the customer's total wealth profile: Before pitching a product, you must understand the customer's total leverage. Because Owner Link connects an individual to all of their property transactions, financial institutions can gain a lifetime view of a customer's borrowing activity across all properties they own and calculate equity on each property owned using PIM. This allows wealth managers to instantly identify high-net-worth, multiple-property owners and calculate their cumulative estimated property equity.
4. Uncover cross-sell opportunities (The auto loan play): Knowing the equity is only half the battle; you need to solve the customer's pain points. PIM automatically matches credit reports to the borrower. This is where cross-selling becomes incredibly powerful. Imagine discovering that a customer has $200,000 in tappable equity across two properties, but their credit profile shows they recently took out a high-interest auto loan with a competing institution. The bank can now proactively reach out with three targeted solutions:
• The debt consolidation pitch: Offer a low-rate HELOC specifically designed to wipe out the competitor's existing expensive auto loan, improving the customer's monthly cash flow.
• The auto refinance pitch: Utilize the bank's own auto-lending division to offer a direct refinance of the vehicle, leveraging the customer's proven wealth and pristine mortgage payment history to offer a superior rate.
• Future car purchases: Offer low rate HELOC (which can fund virtually any purchase) as an alternative to auto loans for any future car purchases being contemplated.
The bottom line
The home equity market is no longer just about who can offer the best HELOC rate; it is about who understands the customer best. By unifying property-level risk data (PIM) with owner-centric transaction histories (Owner Link), banks can transition from simply collecting mortgage payments to becoming the central hub for their customers' entire financial lives—from home renovations to debt rescue to financing the family cars.
