Is Home Equity an Underutilized Retirement Asset?

Steven A. Sass

Issues in Brief from Center for Retirement Research

Abstract: Retirement planning generally focuses on the use of financial assets. However, home equity is the largest store of savings for most households entering retirement. This brief reviews studies by the Social Security Administration’s Retirement Research Consortium and others that assess whether home equity is an underutilized retirement asset and, if so, why. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section discusses how home equity differs from financial assets. The second section reviews the use of downsizing to access home equity. The third section reviews the use of reverse mortgages. The final section concludes that home equity has been an underutilized retirement asset due to behavioral and informational impediments, and that it remains to be seen whether the growing financial pressures on retirees to tap their savings will overcome these impediments.

Pages: 9 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age
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