Your home equity is the appraised value remaining in your home after you subtract the remaining balance you owe on your existing home mortgage(s). It can be thought of as the part of the home you actually own instead of the bank: the part you’ve paid for so far.
It isn’t difficult to build equity in your home, and chances are if you’ve owned your home for a while and have been making your regular mortgage payments, you probably have built a considerable amount of home equity already. Though the housing market rises and falls in cycles, the overall tendency is consistently upward. In other words, property values tend to rise over the long term.