When you’re trying to apply for a home equity loan, there is actually more preparation steps than meets the eye. The last thing that you will want to do is end up not being prepared to take on the home equity loan. Even though most sales guides present the home equity loan as something effortless, let’s call it what it really is: a second mortgage. Keep that in mind as you think about everything that you will be spending your money on. If you don’t use a home equity loan wisely, you will just end up wracking up more debt that serves you no real purpose.
Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t take at least part of the money and do something fun, like taking that long-awaited vacation. However, you will still need to balance your wants with your needs, and part of that is knowing how much you will receive to begin with.
In order to find out that information, you will want to use a home equity loan calculator. No, that doesn’t mean that you will need to pick up your calculator and crunch the numbers hardcore on your own. You just need to go online — much the way you went online to get information about home equity loans in the first place.
There’s some standard information that just about any home equity loan calculator will ask you for. One of the first things that you will need to enter is how much you actually paid for your home. The next thing that you will often need to enter is how many years that you lived in the home, followed by the average property appreciation rate in your area. This is one of the most important things, as the calculator will use this as a basis to figure out how much equity you’ve gained in your home.
Don’t forget to enter information about your original mortgage, such as the loan amount, the interest rate, the term of the loan, as well as the number of years that you have left to pay the current loan.
The calculator will tell you what your current property value is, with your current loan balance subtracted out. That’s considered the equity that you have in the home. From there, the calculator will tell you about your Combined Loan to Value (CLTV) ratio. This is simply the amount of your mortgage loan plus the home equity loan that you want — balanced against a percentage of the value of your home.
Let’s take this concept and wrap it around an example. 100% CLTV would be being able to tap all of your equity. If you had 80K in equity, you could tap all 80K. Now, most lenders aren’t going to go with a 100% CLTV for multiple reasons. Every lender has their own CLTV ratio that they’re comfortable with, so you’ll just have to ask and see what they will give you. Generally speaking, the lowest CLTV is 70% and the high range is about 90%.
There are some pitfalls to the home equity loan calculator. For one, it assumes that you’ve made all of your mortgage payments on time. If you’ve made early payments, large payments, or even late payments, you could have a different loan balance left on the loan than what you might expect.
Another point to remember is that a calculator can only give you an estimate — you will still need to make sure that you still wait to see what the lender will tell you. There’s no reason not to get the information that you need simply because you’re worried about what the lender will actually come back with. Far too often, you can negotiate a bit if you can prove to the lender that you will be able to actually repay the home equity loan as scheduled. This is where your income statements and overall proof of stability will come in handy too.
At the end of the day, a financial calculator can only help you make smarter decisions if you take the time to use it — why not find a home equity loan calculator today?


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