Maptitude Featured Map Infographic:
Homeowners with No Mortgage by County

Maptitude is the best mapping software for business intelligence! Maptitude mapping software allows you to incorporate data from numerous sources into your maps. We mapped the share of owner-occupied homes that carry no mortgage. Counties where the share of outright ownership exceeds 50% are shown in shades of blue and counties where most homeowners have a mortgage are shown in shades of orange.

Counties where most homes do not have a mortgage all tend to be low-cost rural markets, especially in the Great Plains, Southeast, and Appalachia. Urban counties, even in fairly rural states, all tend to have homes with a mortgage.

It may be tempting to read a high share counties with no mortgage as accumulated wealth, but this map measures how far mortgage lending reaches into a housing market, not how much equity sits behind it. Pair this data with median home value to separate owners who have real borrowing capacity from owners who simply have an inexpensive house and no debt.

Note: The counts cover owner-occupied homes only, so renters are excluded and this is not a measure of county wealth. Values are 2024 5-Year American Community Survey estimates, which describe a five-year period rather than a single point in time.