Tag Archives: reset

Home Equity Loan Resets

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photo by Karel Chladek

Newsday quoted me in Know What To Do When Your Home Equity Loan Resets (behind paywall). It opens,

Whoever said what you don’t know can’t hurt you, was wrong. Take for example the 43% of U.S. homeowners polled by TD Bank, who over the next couple of years will have their Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOC) reset. More than a quarter of them don’t know when their draw period ends.

People use HELOCs for things like home renovations, medical bills and college tuition. With HELOCs, you borrow — often for 10 years — and make interest-only payments. When that “draw period” ends, you pay principal and interest. Monthly payments can jump significantly.

However, only 19% of those polled understood that a reset would increase their monthly payments and 34% thought they would decrease.

Confusion is costly.

  • Understand the terms

What is the current interest rate? When does it reset? When it resets, how is the new interest rate determined? When are principal payments first due? What will the new payment be? Can the HELOC convert to a fixed interest rate? Know the answers to these questions, says David Reiss, a Brooklyn law school professor, specializing in real estate.

  • Come up with a game plan

“Don’t wait until the final month of the interest-only period to evaluate the impact the payment has on your budget,” says Chuck Price, vice president of lending at NEFCU in Westbury.

 

 

Reset Tsunami

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Cyclone home

Newsday quoted me in When Home Equity Lines of Credit Reset when your plan resets. It reads,

A decade isn’t really a long time – just ask the millions of homeowners whose 10-year-old home equity lines of credit are resetting.

There are two types of HELOC resets: Variable interest rates can reset, and an interest-only repayment plan can reset to amortize. That means payments will switch to include principal and interest, explains David Reiss, a law professor specializing in real estate at Brooklyn Law School.

Many are in for a shock. If you’ve been making interest-only payments for 10 years, “the switch to amortizing over the compressed 20-year period [remaining on a 30-year loan] can lead to an increase of 100 percent or more,” says Peter Grabel of Luxury Mortgage Corp. in Stamford, Connecticut.

If your HELOC is resetting, know what to expect.

“You will no longer be able to draw on the equity line,” says Casey Fleming, author of “The Loan Guide: How to Get the Best Possible Mortgage.” You’ll have a specific time to pay off the loan.

Consider your goals: “What is your purpose for having a HELOC?” says Ray Rodriguez of TD Bank in Manhattan. That drives the options.

Plan for change: “Prepare for the end of the draw period. Find out what your new payment will be,” says Kevin Murphy of McGraw-Hill Federal Credit Union in Manhattan. Cut expenses to make up for the jump.

Explore options: Consider refinancing your debt into a longer-term fixed-rate loan, suggests Ben Sullivan of Palisades Hudson Financial Group in Scarsdale. Replace the HELOC with a new one, or combine your first mortgage with your HELOC into a new interest-only ARM. Talk to a mortgage counselor.