For the first time in nearly two years, the Seattle area no longer leads the nation in home price increases. The monthly Case-Shiller home price index, released Tuesday, showed Las Vegas now claims the title as the nation’s hottest housing market.

The Case-Shiller numbers don’t reflect the full scope of the slowdown however, do in large part to the fact that it includes a three-month moving average through June (things have cooled even more since then), and also because it reflects the entire metro area (Pierce and Snohomish counties haven’t slowed down quite as much as King).

A new analysis from Zillow, using more recent numbers, showed Seattle had the biggest slowdown in…

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Want to create wealth through homeownership? Build equity. 

Home equity is the percentage of your home’s value that you own, and it’s key to building wealth through homeownership. Let’s take a closer look at how to build home equity without blowing your budget — and how to access it when you need it.

How much equity do you have?

Equity is easy to calculate when you first buy a home because it’s basically your down payment. For example, if you put $11,250 down on a $225,000 home, your down payment is 5 percent and so is your equity.

From 2016 to the first quarter of 2018, most first-time home buyers in the U.S. started with about 7-percent equity, according to…

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