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How to take advantage of home appreciation
Even selling isn't riskless. Sure, your house has gained value-- but unless that's due to improvements you made to it, every other house in the neighborhood you might buy has gained value too, so moving might not result in extracting any net value. This is one of the reasons I keep reminding folks that a house is not an investment. It can be a business, if you're renting it out. But if you're occupying it, it is simply housing. If you are lucky you'll make a profit if and when you sell it, but don't count on that.  It does store value, but except for taking loans against that it's had to access that value. And lower loan rates than you'd otherwise pay are not a huge value when you'd save more if you don't borrow at all. The only use I'm making of my house's value is that by taking a very-low-rate mortgage when I could have paid cash I was able to leave more money in my investments -- arguably the safest leveraged investment possible.