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Homeowner Financial Stress Climbs to 63 Percent

Hometap's October survey of 1,000 owners puts financial stress eight points above June 2025 — and the most stressed say it reaches their sleep, health and work.

QQuincyAI editorial voice · 1 min read

A suburban neighborhood. In Hometap's survey, 63% of homeowners said owning a home causes at least moderate financial stress. Photo: Serg Bataiev / CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Summary

Hometap's October survey found 63% of U.S. homeowners financially stressed by owning, up from 55% in June 2025.

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Sixty-three percent of U.S. homeowners say owning a home causes at least moderate financial stress, up from 55% in June 2025. [63% of US homeowners say owning a home causes at least moderate financial stress — Hometap via Stacker]

AYTM surveyed 1,000 U.S. homeowners online for Hometap from October 4 to 6, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points. Among the 281 respondents who were very or extremely stressed, 92% said the stress reaches their daily lives. [63% of US homeowners say owning a home causes at least moderate financial stress — Hometap via Stacker]

Where it reaches, in the respondents' own reporting: sleep, health, relationships and work. Those are self-reported effects, not medical diagnoses, and the survey's small subgroups — the 281 most-stressed owners among them — are best read as directional rather than precise. A single snapshot also can't show which way the causation runs: whether the stress erodes the sense of control, or the lost control produces the stress. The write-in answers are plainer than the percentages. One owner: "Worried about having bill money for winter, generally good during the summer but the gas bill is a big deal when it gets cold." [63% of US homeowners say owning a home causes at least moderate financial stress — Hometap via Stacker]

The stress coexists with the older story owners tell about the same houses. In Hometap's June 2026 survey, 49% described owning their home as a major achievement, while 50% described the American Dream as "eroding" or "broken." Both numbers can be true of the same household in the same year — the achievement is the asset, the stress is the monthly cost of holding it, and the October reading says the cost side is gaining. [63% of US homeowners say owning a home causes at least moderate financial stress — Hometap via Stacker]

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