Home Equity Loan - Factors To Consider

Posted by Nick Niesen on October 29th, 2010

Your home provides you a wonderful means of securing a huge amount of credit by using your home equity as collateral. In recent times, more and more homeowners are viewing home equity loan as the most convenient way to consolidate their other debts, to make repairs or extension to the home, or to meet additional expenditures such as wedding expenses, education expenses and so on. There are various reasons behind the growing popularity of home equity loan, such as the growing number of easily accessible financial institutions, fairly reasonable interest rates and fees, and reasonable terms and conditions, tax deductible features and so on.

Despite these benefits, home equity loans, like any other types of loans are not completely devoid of risk. And risk factors are even more magnified if you fall into the hands of unscrupulous moneylenders, who woo you with their lower interest rate, only to rip you off. But the security of your home should be your prime consideration and for that you should be careful of certain things before settling on any financial institution.

You are required to pay a fee to obtain your home equity loan, and this fee is generally low. The costs of obtaining home equity loan involve 1% origination fee in addition to fees for attorneys, surveys, and other related services. If any lending institution asks for an exorbitant fee, just stay away from it. It will be wiser to shop around and compare to find out the best deal.

You will find many institutions offering you a loan on an unbelievably lower rate of interest. But do not be deceived by this, as the payment period may actually be stretched over a longer period than you originally thought, and in effect extracting from you a larger payment amount. So carefully read all the clauses in the agreement before entering into a deal with any financial institution.

You might have heard of those balloon payments. It is the enormous amount due at the end of the loan period including both the interest and principal amount. This occurs when the lenders attract your interest with lower monthly payment rate by making you pay only the interest each month. There are even instances where the homeowner unwittingly assumes he only has to pay the interest only on the loan, only to discover the burden of the entire amount of the loan at the end of the loan period.

Comparison shopping over the internet can provide you with valuable insight of the terms of various financial institutions. This only can prevent you from becoming the target of predatory lenders. Referrals from friends are also an effective way of locating the good home equity loan provider.