Homeownership plays a central role in wealth building in the United States, yet far less is known about how wealth evolves after households become homeowners—particularly for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) households. This report provides the first comprehensive, life-cycle trajectory analysis of wealth building anchored in homeownership for AANHPI households over the past two decades. Drawing on nationally representative longitudinal data, the study traces how wealth is accumulated, used, preserved, and transferred over the life course. These findings offer insights that can inform federal, state, and local policies to support wealth building and intergenerational mobility for AANHPI households and for households more broadly.

Why It Matters

AANHPI households are one of the fastest-growing segments of the US population and an increasingly important part of the housing market, yet their wealth-building experiences have long been overlooked. By tracing how wealth evolves across the life cycle—from accumulation and use to preservation and transfer—this report reveals barriers that persist well beyond market entry. These insights matter for policymakers, financial institutions, and community organizations seeking to design housing, credit, and wealth-building policies that promote long-term economic security and intergenerational mobility, not only for AANHPI households but for households across the United States.

What We Found

Homeownership anchors wealth accumulation, but barriers persist at market entry.
Over the past three decades, the AANHPI homeownership rate rose from 52 percent to 63 percent—an 11 percentage-point increase, one of the largest gains across major racial and ethnic groups. Once households enter homeownership, median home equity grows steadily over time, rising from about $180,000 within the first five years after purchase to more than $340,000 by years 6 through 10 and continuing to grow with longer tenure. But AANHPI households continue to face higher mortgage denial rates, language barriers, and limited use of public homeownership assistance programs, constraining access to this foundational wealth-building stage.

Housing wealth supports major financial needs, but access to equity is uneven.
As home equity accumulates, households tend to leverage housing wealth to meet education, family support, and health care needs. AANHPI households that extract home equity tend to have higher incomes but lower liquid asset buffers, and extraction years are associated with sharply higher spending—family support expenditures more than double and education expenditures nearly triple relative to nonextraction years. At the same time, disparities in refinance and cash-out lending limit many homeowners’ ability to equitably access housing wealth, particularly during mid- and late-life stages.

Nonhousing wealth increases over time but remains exposed to economic risk.
Nonhousing assets—including retirement accounts, financial assets, and business equity—grow in importance as homeownership tenure lengthens. Among AANHPI homeowners with more than 20 years of tenure, median nonhousing wealth exceeds $500,000. Notably, AANHPI households are the only group for which housing concentration declines after age 65, reflecting continued growth of nonhousing wealth in later life. But business equity is often concentrated in cyclically sensitive industries and supported by a relatively narrow set of financing channels, increasing vulnerability to economic shocks and limiting wealth preservation.

Wealth transfer is central to intergenerational mobility, yet realization gaps are largest for AANHPI households.
Nearly half of Asian homeowners ages 65 and older expect to leave an inheritance—a higher share than among Black, Hispanic, or white homeowners—highlighting the multigenerational nature of wealth building. At the same time, only about 10 percent of Asian households report having received an inheritance, the largest gap between intention and realization across major racial and ethnic groups. These gaps point to challenges in succession planning, estate management, and asset preservation that limit the intergenerational impact of accumulated wealth.

Policy Implications

The findings point to the need for a holistic, life-cycle approach to wealth building—one that spans wealth accumulation, preservation and transfer. Responsibility for advancing this agenda falls on federal, state, and local governments; financial institutions and intermediaries; and community-based organizations, each of which plays a role at different stages of the wealth-building process.

• Expand equitable access to homeownership: Federal and state housing agencies, regulators, and lenders can reduce barriers at market entry by supporting cash flow–based underwriting, improving language access throughout the mortgage process, strengthening housing counseling, and expanding outreach to down payment assistance and special purpose credit programs that remain underutilized in AANHPI communities.
• Enable safe and sustainable use of housing wealth over the life cycle: Regulators, lenders, and housing counselors can improve access to housing wealth by monitoring disparities in home equity extractions, expanding counseling beyond the point of purchase, and strengthening consumer protections—particularly for multilingual and aging homeowners navigating complex products.
• Strengthen nonhousing wealth preservation and small-business resilience: Small-business agencies, financial institutions, and mission-driven lenders can reduce household vulnerability by promoting diversified financing options, improving language access in small-business finance, integrating housing and business policy conversations, and developing tools that help households manage economic shocks without destabilizing housing wealth.
• Facilitate effective wealth transfer and intergenerational mobility: State and local governments, legal systems, and service providers can support intergenerational wealth transfer by expanding access to affordable estate and succession planning services, increasing multilingual legal assistance, addressing heirs’ property risks, and embedding planning support within existing housing, aging, and wealth-building programs.
• Improve data infrastructure to support evidence-based policy: Federal agencies and data providers can strengthen policy design by improving identification of AANHPI populations across housing, credit, and wealth datasets and supporting oversampling in longitudinal surveys—particularly for Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and southeast Asian communities whose experiences may diverge from aggregate patterns.

How We Did It

This report draws on nationally representative longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (1999–2023), supplemented by the Survey of Consumer Finances, Annual Business Survey, and National Survey of Mortgage Originations. Using a life-cycle framework, we track households over time to examine income and homeownership dynamics, equity accumulation and extraction, nonhousing wealth expansion, and intergenerational transfers. This approach allows us to move beyond point-in-time comparisons and analyze how wealth-building trajectories evolve as households age and progress through different stages of homeownership.