A home equity loan allows you to turn the equity you have in your home into cash by borrowing money and using your home as collateral to insure that you'll repay it. If you default on the loan, depending on the company they may be able to force sale of your home. Other lenders only place a lien which does not give them the power to force sale for non payment but they will remain against the title of your home and in the event of a sale or refinance they will collect their money at that time. Most of them will also send the loan to collections to attempt to collect the monies ahead of time. Make sure to read the fine print.
Debt Consolidation
By far one of the biggest reasons that homeowners apply for a home equity loan is to consolidate their debts. If you have outstanding debt to several different creditors at several different interest rates, it's often to your benefit to consolidate all those into one loan payment, potentially at a lower rate too. To do that, you can take out a home equity loan for the amount that you owe on all your debts together - or more - then use that money to pay off all your outstanding debts in full. By doing that, you trade making several payments each month for making one payment, which is often less than the amount that you've been paying on all of the debts combined. This is because you're also trading in the higher interest rates on your credit cards and loans for a lower interest rate on one loan. Chances are that you've also set a fixed time to pay back that loan, most often 10 years, though it could be as little as 3 years or as much as 15 years depending on the lender and amount being borrowed.
If you want to make improvements or repairs to your home, it only makes sense to get the money OUT of your home to do it. Home improvements are one of the top five reasons that homeowners give for taking out home equity loans. If the reason for making improvements is to increase the home's value or prepare it for a sale, then you should definitely take a look at the home improvements that return the most on your investment.
Special events like weddings and vacations are the third most popular reason for taking out a home equity loan. For a wedding or other special event, where there will be multiple payments made to different merchants, a home equity line of credit is often a better choice than a lump sum home equity loan.
If you would like to learn more about secured loans and to see what you might qualify for please visit https://www.townfinancial.ca/secured-loans