Stock Wealth Surges Past Real Estate: Should First-Time Buyers Hold Off To Build a Down Payment?

If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right moment to buy your first home, you’re certainly not alone.With mortgage rates at a standstill in the mid-6% range, many first-time homebuyers are using this time to build their down payment savings. If this sounds like you, you’ve likely noticed a silver lining to the delay.Thanks to a powerful run in the stock market, your down payment fund might actually be larger today than it was a year ago. In fact, according to a recent report from Goldman Sachs, U.S. household equity holdings have surpassed real estate as a share of net financial wealth for the first time since World War II.While watching your brokerage balance grow should feel great, keeping your homebuying fund tied up in the stock market while waiting for the right home is a high-risk game—one that could backfire any day now. Stocking money awayThe Goldman Sachs report shared that household equity allocations are approaching 50% of financial assets in the U.S.—surpassing levels seen during the dot-com era. A massive portion of those gains has been driven by technology stocks."Equity gains have been the dominant driver of household wealth accumulation ​and the m...