Why I Can’t Refinance My HELOC Loan

Be careful when you apply for a home equity line of credit

Always read your contracts. Sometimes that isn’t even enough. Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

HELOC: Home Equity Line of Credit, or in other words; Having Evidently Little Outside Control over my loan.

I needed to refinance my HELOC loan. When we first bought our house, we decided to finance the HELOC to avoid mortgage interest. Our mortgage lender got us (what we thought was) a good deal at the time. However, several things have happened to make us want to switch over to another bank for a HELOC. Here’s some examples:

• Our interest rate is variable and over 7% (My first mortgage interest is fixed at 4.25%, the rate offered at the time of the loan. My only credit card charges me 9.9%, pretty good for a credit card. In my opinion, this is a high interest rate for a HELOC).
• The banks website only allows us to make online payments. We aren’t able to check a balance or any other details about our loan. Either they aren’t advanced enough or they purposefully withhold that information. And their customer service sucks.
• We are billed only on the interest. Because we can’t access any details online, I will add on some money to pay down principal, which is a shot in the dark.
• The loan interest amount has increased over $30 per month since we’ve had the loan…