Short answer: enough to cover what you still owe plus the costs of selling. There is no required minimum in law — there is a break-even line, and it is arithmetic, not a rule of thumb. Here is how to find yours.
Your equity is your home's value minus everything owed on it — the mortgage, and any second loan or home equity line. At closing, the sale pays off those loans first, then the costs of selling come out: the commissions you agreed to pay, title and closing costs, and any repairs or credits you gave the buyer. If your equity covers the payoff and those costs, you sell without bringing cash and keep what is left. If it falls short, the difference is cash you bring to the closing table. That one comparison — equity against payoff plus selling costs — is the whole test; rules of thumb about percentages just estimate the same line from further away.
Say a home would sell for $400,000 and the owner owes $340,000 on the mortgage — the equity is $60,000. From that $60,000 come the selling costs agreed in the deal; what remains after them is the owner's proceeds, before moving costs and whatever the next home needs. The numbers in this example are illustrative only — your agent's net sheet runs the identical math on your payoff quote, your likely price, and your street's real costs.
Falling short today is not falling short forever. The equity line moves from both sides: each payment lowers what you owe, and your value moves as nearby homes sell. Owners short of break-even generally have three honest options — wait and let the line move, sell and bring the difference in cash, or, where the home is worth less than the debt and cash cannot cover it, talk to the lender about a short sale, which needs the lender's approval before the sale, not at it. What does not help is pricing above the market to wish the gap away; the appraisal and the buyers price the home, not the need.
Equity is the number before the sale; proceeds are what actually lands after payoff, selling costs, and the adjustments on the settlement statement — prorated taxes, any lien or HOA balance, the recording and title charges. A healthy equity figure can still produce a thin check if the costs were never counted, which is why the decision number is the net sheet, not the equity headline. Homeowner HQ's monthly update keeps the equity half current; your own agent supplies the cost half for your home and your deal.
A Homeowner HQ estimate is not an appraisal.
Your own agent sends a monthly value update from Homeowner HQ — the estimate, labeled as an estimate, with your equity beside it — and HQ runs on Amazon AWS. Realtors and lenders use the same HQ together: homeowners stay connected to their own agent, and the monthly trend is the honest way to watch what is moving the number.
Homeowners are always free. Realtors pay $25/mo to join and lenders join at the $5/mo founding rate, at any book size, with no setup fee; sending messages inside HQ is a $100/mo unlock ($125/mo total for realtors, $105/mo total for lenders). A lender-sponsored realtor joins for $0.
Homeowner HQ is an AI-powered marketing department for agents and lenders — a relationship and revenue engine, not a homeowner database. A homeowner's record routes them back to their own agent; it is never sold and never shown to lenders.