Home Equity Quick Tips

Bankers love it when you borrow against your house. That's reason enough to be wary of home-equity lending.

Yet millions of Americans are buying lenders' pitches that our homes are a good source of funds for whatever our little hearts desire, from Super Bowl tickets to exotic vacations to investments in stocks and bonds. That lust for cheap cash has turned home-equity lending into the fastest-growing, and very profitable, area of consumer loans.

Mainstream home-equity lending soared 33% last year according to SMR Research, with new borrowing at nearly quadruple the level of just five years ago. The amount we owe on home-equity loans and lines of credit, $719 billion, now exceeds the balances on our Visas, MasterCards and other general-purpose credit cards.

Those figures don't include home-equity lending to people with troubled credit. So-called subprime mortgage lending rose 60% last year, said SMR vice president George Yacik, to $516 billion. Although the figure includes first mortgages, Yacik said most subprime home lending involves home-equity loans and lines of credit.
Good for banks, risky for consumers
The risk to lenders from all this debt is quite low. The amount banks actually lose on home-equity lending overall is about 0.15%, Yacik said, compared to more than 3% on credit cards.

"There's no bad debt to speak of," Yacik said. "(The borrower's) home is at stake, and they have to be deeply extended not to pay their bill."

Rising home prices mean that banks can get their money back even if they have to foreclose, and troubled borrowers typically sell the home or refinance before that happens.

The low default rate masks the real problem with home-equity lending: Most borrowers are using the loans and lines of credit to fritter away their long-term wealth on short-term spending.

"I recall one computer magazine a couple of years ago that recommended that people get home-equity loans or lines of credit to purchase computers," said Andrew Analore, editor of Inside B&C Lending, an Inside Mortgage Finance publication. Then there was the recent Associated Press article about fans calling mortgage lenders to finance Super Bowl tickets, on top of the more usual borrowing to fund big-screen TVs to watch the game.

"That kind of stuff can be problematic," Analore said, "because people sometimes don't understand that their house is on the line if, for some reason, they are unable to pay for their new computer or big-screen television."
Understand loan types
Solid statistics are hard to find, but lenders believe a third or less of home-equity borrowing is used for anything that could be considered an investment, such as home improvements or education. The rest goes for debt consolidation, vacations or purchases of assets that quickly depreciate, such as cars.

If you're thinking of literally betting your house with a home-equity loan or line of credit, you should clearly understand how these loans work, when to use them and how to get the best deals.

First, the basics. There are two types of home equity lending, loans and lines of credit:

* Home-equity loans are installment loans, like regular mortgages and auto loans. You're given a certain amount of money which you typically receive all at once and pay back according to a set schedule, over time. Home-equity loans usually come with fixed rates and fixed payments.

* Home-equity lines of credit, by contrast, work more like credit cards. You're given a credit limit that you can borrow against, and paying down your debt frees up more credit that you can potentially spend. Home-equity lines of credit have variable interest rates that are typically tied to the prime rate.

Unlike credit cards, however, home-equity lines of credit usually aren't open-ended. For the first 10 years or so, you can draw as much as you want from your credit limit, and you only need to pay the interest charges. In the next stage, however, the "draw" period ends and whatever debt you have left is "amortized," which means you need to start paying principal and interest to retire your debt. (Some lenders let you renew your draw period, but eventually the debt has to be paid off.)
With either type of borrowing, you're pledging your home as collateral. If you fall behind on your payments, the lender can foreclose and take your house.