Most people who are thinking about selling are really asking one question underneath all the others: do I have enough? Enough to pay off the loan, cover the costs, put something down on the next place, and come out the other side without having gone backwards.
It is an answerable question. It just requires being honest about three numbers most homeowners estimate badly: what the home is actually worth, what you actually owe, and what selling actually costs. Here is how to get to a real answer.
The Math, and the Part Everyone Gets Wrong
Equity is simple on paper:
Your Real Equity
What it sells for today, minus every loan secured by it, minus the cost of selling. That is your take-home. Everything else is a number that feels good on a banking app.
The part that surprises people is the middle term. Your payoff is not your balance. Mortgage interest is paid in arrears, so a payoff quote adds accrued per-diem interest through the actual funding date, plus reconveyance and statement fees. It is almost always higher than your last statement, and payoff quotes expire, which is why escrow orders a fresh one timed to your closing.
Then there is everything else attached to the title. A second mortgage or HELOC gets paid off from proceeds. So does a solar loan with a UCC filing, a tax lien, a judgment, or a contractor's lien you may have forgotten about. Every lien lands on the settlement statement whether you were thinking about it or not.
One specific warning on HELOCs: a line has to be closed, not merely paid to zero. A zeroed line that stays open can be drawn against before the reconveyance clears, which creates a genuine mess at closing. Tell your lender you are selling and close it properly.
Start With a Real Value, Not a Guess
Everything downstream depends on the first number, and the first number is where most people are furthest off, in both directions. Some owners are anchored to a peak-market figure from a few years ago. Others are anchored to what they paid and have not registered how much has changed.
For context, Clark County's median sale price was $570,000 in June 2026, essentially flat against a year earlier, per the RMLS Market Action report for Southwest Washington. Year to date the median has run closer to $550,000, a touch above the same stretch of 2025. The honest summary is that Clark County prices are roughly flat, not climbing quickly and not falling.
Flat markets are where estimates drift, because there is no obvious trend to correct a bad guess. If your number came from an automated estimate, treat it as a starting point rather than an answer. Our guide to what your home is actually worth covers why those tools miss and what a real valuation involves.
What Selling Actually Costs in Clark County
Two line items dominate, and one of them is unique to Washington.
Real estate excise tax. Washington charges a graduated excise tax on the sale, and under RCW 82.45.080 it is the seller's obligation by statute, not by local custom. The state portion is 1.10% on the portion of the price up to $525,000, then 1.28% from there to $1,525,000, with higher brackets above that. It is marginal, not flat, so a $600,000 sale is not taxed entirely at 1.28%. Clark County adds 0.50% nearly everywhere, including Vancouver, Battle Ground, Camas, La Center, Ridgefield, and Washougal, with Yacolt at 0.25%.
On a $570,000 Vancouver sale that works out to about $6,351 in state excise tax plus $2,850 local, roughly $9,201, plus a small transaction processing fee. Worth knowing: these brackets have been in place since 2023 and run through the end of 2026. They adjust for inflation every four years, with the next set publishing in late 2026 for a January 1, 2027 effective date. If you are reading this in 2027, check the current numbers. Our REET guide has the full breakdown.
Agent compensation. Worth being straight about, because the story you have heard may not match the data. Following the 2024 NAR settlement, the widespread expectation was that commissions would fall. Redfin's tracking through Q3 2025 showed the average buyer's agent commission at 2.42%, slightly up from 2.36% a year earlier, with homes in the $500,000 to $999,000 range averaging 2.32%. That is one brokerage's data rather than an industry census, and it is a contested topic. But nobody has published credible evidence of a collapse, and there is no Washington-specific figure we would stand behind. What genuinely changed is that compensation is now explicitly negotiated rather than assumed. Ask.
Then the smaller items: escrow (typically split, and subject to Washington sales tax), title, recording fees, prorated property taxes, and any HOA dues or transfer fees. One local note, since it moved recently: Clark County's recording fee for a first page went to $303.50 under the schedule effective July 27, 2025, up substantially from the prior schedule.
For the full line-by-line walk-through of what lands on your settlement statement, see our net proceeds guide. This article is about whether the move makes sense. That one is about the arithmetic.
The Tax Question, and a Correction Worth Reading
This one costs people real money in unnecessary worry, so here it is plainly.
Washington's capital gains tax does not apply to real estate. That is the Department of Revenue's own language. The exemption holds regardless of how long you owned the property, whether you occupied it, where in the state it sits, whether it is residential or commercial, and whether the owner is an individual, a trust, or a business.
Washington's 7% capital gains excise tax is real, and it applies to things like stock sales. It has nothing to do with your house. We have talked to owners who delayed a move over this, and it is a misunderstanding worth clearing up early.
Federal rules still apply. The Section 121 exclusion shelters up to $250,000 of gain for a single filer and $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly, provided you owned and used the home as your primary residence for two of the last five years. Those figures are unchanged and are not indexed to inflation, which matters more every year in a market where a long-held Clark County home may have appreciated substantially. Our capital gains guide goes deeper, and if you are near the threshold, talk to a CPA rather than a blog.
The Rate Trade-Off Is the Real Decision
For most Clark County owners weighing a move in 2026, equity is not actually the binding constraint. The mortgage they already have is.
As of Q1 2026, roughly half of all outstanding mortgages carried a rate below 4%, and about two thirds were below 5%. Meanwhile Freddie Mac put the 30-year fixed at 6.55% for the week ending July 16, 2026.
That gap is the whole conversation. If you are sitting on a 3.5% loan, moving means repricing your housing debt by roughly three points. On the same balance, that is a materially larger payment for the same house. No amount of equity makes that arithmetic disappear.
So the honest framing is not "can I afford to sell." It is "is the next home worth the premium I would pay to finance it?" Sometimes it clearly is: a growing family genuinely out of room, a job change, a health issue, a house with stairs you should not be climbing, a divorce, a downsize that cuts your cost of living permanently. Sometimes it clearly is not, and staying put is a perfectly good answer. We would rather tell you that than list a house you did not need to sell.
A Sign of the Shift
Q1 2026 was the first quarter since Q3 2020 in which sub-4% mortgages fell below half of all outstanding loans. The lock-in effect is easing gradually rather than breaking at any single rate. It is loosening, slowly, as life events accumulate and the low-rate cohort thins.
How Much Equity Is Enough for the Next House?
Less than you probably think, though the market is behaving as if the old rule still holds.
Twenty percent down is a convention, not a requirement. Conventional loans go well below it, FHA lower still, and VA and USDA can reach zero for those who qualify. Putting down less means mortgage insurance on most conventional loans, which is a real cost but a removable one as you build equity.
That said, know what you are up against. NAR's 2025 profile put the median down payment at 19% across all buyers, 10% for first-time buyers, and 23% for repeat buyers. The repeat buyer figure is the highest since 2003. And the number that matters most for this article: 54% of repeat buyers funded their purchase with proceeds from their previous home sale.
That last statistic is the whole move-up market in one line. The majority of your competition for the next house is not bringing savings. They are bringing the equity from the house they just sold, which is exactly what you would be doing.
What About Owners Who Are Short?
Worth acknowledging honestly, because the equity picture nationally has softened rather than improved.
ATTOM's Q1 2026 report put 43.3% of mortgaged properties in the equity-rich category, meaning loans totaling 50% or less of estimated market value, down from 44.6% the prior quarter and the lowest since Q4 2021. Seriously underwater properties, at 125% or more of value, rose to 3.2%, the highest since Q1 2022. Equity-rich shares fell in 87% of the metros ATTOM tracks.
We are quoting the national figures deliberately. You will find pages citing a specific Washington equity-rich percentage from this report, and we could not find Washington data in the release itself. We are not going to repeat a number we cannot verify, which is a good general policy when reading anything about your own equity.
If you bought recently with little down and prices have been flat, it is entirely possible your equity does not yet cover the cost of selling. That is not a moral failing, it is arithmetic, and it usually resolves with time. Better to know now than to find out in escrow.
Getting Your Actual Number
Three steps, in order:
- Get a real value. Not an automated estimate, and not the neighbor's rumor about what the house down the street got. Something that accounts for your condition, your updates, and your lot.
- Call your lender for a payoff quote, not a balance, and ask about every lien on the property, including anything a solar installer or contractor may have filed.
- Subtract real selling costs, with excise tax computed on the actual graduated brackets rather than a flat guess.
What is left is your equity. Then, and only then, the interesting question: is that number, plus the payment you would take on at today's rates, enough to buy the life you are trying to move toward?
That question deserves an actual conversation rather than a calculator. Get a free broker estimate and we will give you a real value for your home and a straight answer about what the move would net you, including if the answer is that it does not make sense right now.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I figure out how much equity I have in my home?
Take what your home would sell for today, subtract every loan secured by it, then subtract selling costs. Note that your payoff is not your statement balance. Interest is paid in arrears, so a payoff includes accrued per-diem interest through funding plus fees, and it expires.
Does Washington charge capital gains tax when I sell my house?
No. The Department of Revenue states plainly that Washington's capital gains tax does not apply to the sale or exchange of real estate, regardless of ownership length, occupancy, property type, or owner type. Federal rules still apply, including the Section 121 exclusion of $250,000 single or $500,000 married filing jointly.
What does it cost to sell a house in Clark County?
Agent compensation and excise tax dominate. On a $570,000 Vancouver sale, excise runs roughly $9,201 combining graduated state rates with Clark County's 0.50 percent. Escrow, title, recording, prorated taxes, and HOA fees follow. Excise tax is the seller's obligation by statute.
Do I need 20 percent down to buy my next home?
No, it is a convention rather than a rule, and conventional, FHA, VA, and USDA all allow less. But repeat buyers nationally put down a median 23 percent as of 2025, the highest since 2003, and 54 percent used proceeds from their prior sale.
Should I sell if it means giving up a low mortgage rate?
It depends on the gap and what the move is worth. About half of outstanding mortgages are below 4 percent while the 30-year fixed sat at 6.55 percent in mid-July 2026. Trading a 3.5 percent loan for one near 6.5 percent raises your payment on the same balance, so ask whether the next home solves a problem worth that premium. Sometimes the answer is no.
Avenir Gedarevich
Avenir is the Designated Broker of Vancouver Property Group, serving home sellers across Southwest Washington and Clark County. Managing Broker License #24033559, Vancouver Property Group LLC, WA Real Estate Firm License #25011405.