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This is a follow up to the other day’s email about fear. Fear doesn’t shout, it just quietly freezes you in place.
That email was about how you are not broken for hesitating. You are human. This one is about what to do with that fear when you are sitting on good equity and a house you’re not sure is still working for you.
First question, before math, and before rates.
Does this house still fit your real life?
Not the life you thought you would have when you bought it,
But the actual life you live:
Your work
Your kids
Your parents
Your health
Your stairs
Your sanity
A lot of people are living a very different life in 2025 than they were a few years ago and might still be forcing the same house to work because they’re scared to touch their mortgage rate. Now that is a legitimate fear. But belief in “forever homes” is being re-assessed more often nowadays.
If the house does not fit, your question is not just “what is my house worth?”
It is “what is this mismatch costing me every day?”
Now we can talk about the two other pieces.
The financial safety
Do you have a payment you can live with without holding your breath every month? Is there at least roughly twenty percent equity as a cushion if life throws you a curveball?
If the answer is yes, your house is doing its basic job. It’s not putting you at daily risk.
If the answer is no, then the problem is not “are we leaving money on the table?”
It’s “how do we get you out of a fragile spot without blowing up our whole life?”
That might be selling
It might be a refinance
It might be a HELOC
It might be restructuring other parts of your balance sheet so you can breathe again.
The opportunity
What do you actually own versus what you owe?
Not the fantasy number from a random (Z)estimate.
What’s a realistic value range minus your actual loan balance and an honest accounting of transaction costs if you did sell or make a move.
Owners as a group are still sitting on trillions in home equity. Many individual owners have six figures of tappable equity. Some are using it to improve their life. Some are using it to make a mess. Many are doing nothing and calling it “being smart” when it might be smart and it might just be fear in a nice outfit.
So, the question becomes:
If you never touched that equity and five years go by, will you feel relieved?
Or will you feel like you kept your life smaller than it needed to be?
Because that equity is only growing at whatever pace your home appreciates. Should some of it be working harder for you somewhere else? Are you risk averse? Aggressive? Do you have big expenses coming up? College? Caregiving? Starting a business? Renovations that would actually improve your daily life?
None of this has a one size fits all answer.
For some people doing nothing is absolutely the smartest thing they can do.
For others doing nothing is the riskiest move in the long run. And it just feels safer today because it avoids a decision.
What gets under my skin is that almost nobody in this business is paid to sit with that tension, or even define it.
Most of the messages you see are about timing the market. Great time to blah blah blah.
I rarely see questions about whether your house still fits your life. Or keeps you safe and uses your equity in a way that matches who you are and what is coming next for you.
The other day I said I am agnostic about whether you sell, or wait and stay put but with a plan.
That is still true.
What I care about is whether the decision you make is one you can live with in five or ten years.
My job, as I see it, is not to talk you into the move that pays me.
It is to walk through the fit of your current home, the safety of your current situation, and the potential opportunity in a move with you until the answer becomes obvious.
Sometimes that means I’ll suggest:
you are fine and stay put; stop letting the headlines live in your head rent free.
Sometimes it means I’ll suggest that the thing you are scared of:
-the move
-the payment change
-the new chapter
is smaller than the cost of staying stuck where you are.
If the questions from that other email are still sitting in the back of your mind
-should we sell?
-should we wait?
-should we monetize this equity?
-or are we pretending the question is not there
Respond here and say:
“I have questions”
We’ll go through the fit, the safety, and the opportunity for your specific situation.
No pressure.
No clever script. I hate scripts and always have.
No “this is the perfect time to list” pitch.
Just a real conversation about whether your house is still working for you or what it might look like if we gamed a better solution.
