Home equity can help you build your net worth when your property increases in value. For instance, if you buy a house for half a million and it goes up to a million after a few years, you'll have half a million in capital gains, increasing your net worth. You can also use leverage from equity that you currently have. In this case, if you buy a house for 100,000, and it increases in price to 200,000, you can go to a bank and use your extra value as collateral to borrow a loan against that amount. Then, you can use this newly created equity as a downpayment to purchase another real estate property, maximizing your assets.