Home Equity

Debt Consolidation Solutions with Fixed Rate Home Equity Loans

If you have enough equity built in you home, a fixed rate home equity loan could quickly get you out from under high credit card bills, immediately improve your credit, and actually save you extra cash.

Some experts say one of the best ways to immediately improve your credit is a home equity loan. When the loan closes, home owners have cash-on-hand to pay off bills. The result: their credit rating starts to improve immediately.

Let's say a home owner has $50,000 in credit card debt. Each month, he or she makes a monthly payment of mostly interest. The payments are regular, but the principal usually hardly goes down. But if the homeowner has $50,000 worth of equity built up in a home, the benefits could be stellar.

First: the home equity loan could have a lower interest rate depending upon the market.

Second: the home owner has $50,000 to immediately pay-off their debt, immediately saving interest, immediate relief from credit card debt and immediate access to more good credit.

Third: The home equity interest is tax deductible, whereas, credit card interest is not.

The IRS allows a complete deduction of the mortgage interest, whereas home owners throw away thousands of dollars on credit card interest. Bankrate.com shows the overnight averages for the interest on a 50K home equity loan at 8.24%, while credit cards usually have interest between 11 and 22%.

Let's look at the $50,000 credit card debt example. $50,000 at 22% interest is costing the homeowner $11,000 per year in interest. The same $50,000 financed as part of a home equity loan charges $4120 of interest per year. The homeowner saves almost $7,000 of outgoing cash each year and now has an additional tax deduction.

If you think a home-equity loan could save you form your creditors, watch out for the current housing market in your area. "Watching the marketplace, I saw the writing on the wall", says banking expert Dan Ambrose. "The real estate values are going down. They're starting to slow down drastically."