What Is the Average Home Loan?

The most expensive home on the block.

Owning your own home is something of the American dream. So is keeping up with the Joneses. Nobody wants to have the most expensive home on the block, and but that might not be as bad as having the least expensive home on the block. The U.S. Census Bureau's American Housing Survey puts out a large amount of data to help you compare yourself to your neighbors. The median house value in the U.S., according to the census, was $170,000 in 2009. There are big regional differences here. In the Western states, the median value was $270,000. In the Midwest, it was $134,000 in 2009. The median monthly payment was $1,000

A Word About Math

The median: no matter which way you look at it, it means half have more and half have less.

To get an average, people usually add up all the values in a set, and divide by the number of things. For example, a student has three test scores, 93, 89 and 95. To get the average, I add those numbers to get 277. Dividing by 3 gives an average of 92.3. But what if I have six houses -- five of them worth $100,000 and the last worth $1 million. Adding them up gives us $1.5 million. Dividing by 6 gives an average house value of $250,000. The average makes the folks who live in the $100,000 house look pretty poor, even though they are pretty normal. The problem is that there is a lower limit for house values. Nobody can buy a house for less than $0. But there isn't really an upper limit. The existence of those few really expensive homes pulls the average up. To account for this, statisticians use the median home value. They put all the housing values on a line and pick the value of the house in the middle. So, for our example, we have five houses worth $100,000 and a sixth worth $1 million. The middle value is $100,000. The median is also a way of saying that half of the houses are worth more and half of the houses are worth less.

Purchase Price

In the first decade of the 21st century, U.S. housing prices rose rapidly, then fell. People who bought decades ago saw their homes become very valuable. The median purchase price of an occupied home in 2009 was $107,500. Half of occupied homes were bought before 1999.

Interest Rates, Length of Mortgate and Years Left

In 2009, the median interest rate on a mortgage was 6 percent. Half of all people had 23 years or longer to pay on a mortgage. The bulk of mortgages started out as 30 year, fixed-rate mortgages.

Remaining Balance

Cutting your payment in half and making it every two weeks can shave years off a mortgage.

The median remaining balance on a U.S. mortgage in 2009 was $106,909. About half of all homeowners had a loan that was worth at least 63 percent of the home's value.

Lines of Credit

Home equity lines are typically used to make repairs.

About 9 million American homeowners were paying both a mortgage and a line of credit on their houses in 2009. Of those homes with a line of credit attached, the median limit was $50,000. Not all of that money was drawn down. The median outstanding balance on a line of credit was $26,000.The median interest rate on those lines was 4.5 percent, with a median payment of $260 per month.

References

• American Housing Survey; Data for 2007.