All Forum Posts by: Pamela S.

Thanks for the suggestions @Jason D.  and @Cam Jimmy 

We were very forthcoming with our plan to invest the money on a rental and the credit union didn't have a problem with that. The state of Texas just treats a HELOC as a 2nd lien if you have not paid off the refi so that is the reasoning as far as a I can tell.

I don't think we're quite ready to do another refi or borrow against 401k but I do appreciate you pointing those out. 

@Cam Jimmy

@Larry Turowski: Maybe the key word is 'cash-out loan'. I was curious after the credit union told us we couldn't get a HELOC too, and found a few sources that states you cannot take a HELOC (2nd lien) if you already have a cash-out loan in place.

This is my first post but I've been devouring information on this website for the last 4-5 months. Pardon me if I don't have all of the jargon down as I'm still learning. My husband and I decided we are interested in purchasing a SFH as a rental eventually and we have half of a 40k down payment so far. It's a bit slow going but steadily increasing the savings. Then, I discovered that a HELOC might be a good way to help and since our home has over 100k in equity currently we thought this would be a good strategy to help with down payment. We got in touch with our local credit union and started the process but quickly found that in Texas you cannot take a HELOC if you've already refinanced once, which we did 3 years ago before I discovered this investing strategy. I had gotten my hopes up about getting to the starting line quicker but it seems we are back to just saving up money again. Is there anything i'm missing when it comes to HELOC? I've also always worked hard to maintain our finances so that our credit score is 800+. It seems like there should be some way of using this to our benefit but I'm not sure what. Am I just too impatient or is there something I'm missing.