By refinancing your home loan you can increase the equity on your home, thus letting you obtain in the future a home equity loan or line of credit or eventually, once the first mortgage is canceled, another mortgage in order to make home improvements, buy another property or for any other purpose you may think of.
Equity Explained
Equity is basically the difference between your property’s value and the remaining debt on your mortgage. For example: If your property is worth $100.000 and your home loan debt, though originally $100.000, is now around $60.000 due to the continued payments, then, the equity on your home is $40.000.
The equity on your home let’s you obtain cheap finance in large amounts because loans and lines of credit based on equity are secured by the same property as your mortgage. In the above example, the proprietor could easily get approved for a home equity loan or home equity line of credit for $40.000 with an interest rate only 1 or 2 points over his mortgage rate.
Refinancing Can Help You Build Equity
Though refinancing is usually used for reducing the burden that mortgage installments sometimes imply or for consolidating debt with a cash out refinance loan, with the proper refinance mortgage loan you can easily start increasing your home equity at a considerably faster rate.
Equity builds either when the property’s value increases for whatever reason or when the mortgage debt’s principal is reduced. The current rate at which the mortgage’s principal is reduced depends on the interest rate and the loan length or to make matters easier, the equity building pace depends on the composition of the mortgage installments.
If the mortgage installments have a higher proportion of interests and a lower proportion of principal, each time you pay your mortgage installments you are only reducing the debt’s principal slightly and thus, your home equity will increase just a bit.
However, if you could refinance your home loan in such a way that a higher amount would go to reducing your debt’s principal, then, your equity would build much faster and you could increase your ability to get finance at lower rates and with higher amounts in a matter of months.
Refinancing To A Shorter Term
It is obviously best if you can get a lower interest rate when refinancing, however, the key to reducing the principal and building equity faster is to shorten the loan term. You’ll of course have to pay higher monthly installments but those installments will have a considerably higher proportion of money that will go to cancelling your mortgage debt’s principal and so, your goal of hastening the equity building rate will be accomplished.
Moreover, since refinancing to a shorter term will undoubtedly reduce the interest rate you pay for your mortgage, by refinancing for a shorter term you will not only build equity faster but you will also save thousands of dollars on interests over the whole life of the loan.
