on the news they can't say two words without saying subprime
I read that HELOC's are now seen as very risky due to a lot of 100% financing and that they are second lien and with the way the RE market is a lot of companies are not doing them anymore at all or severly curtailing them.
Then I read this in a blog...seems HELOC are being reduced for lower FICO scores and/or reduced values in homes:
I opened a 100k heloc last May through a mortgage broker with citibank. There is now a 47k balance. This is the only loan on the property which they appraised at 230k. No missed payments or late payments, all was well until i got my statement yesterday which reduced my line from 100k to 48k. No letter, no phone call, no explanation whatsoever.
I dig out my loan documents which list the usual reasons for such an event to transpire.
1. Property value reduction
2. material change in financial circumstances:
3. citibank is notified by its regulatory agency that continued advances constitute an unsafe and unsound practice: No idea what this could mean.
So i called the Texas call line to get this rep to tell me indeed the line limit had been halved but no explanation was available. My fico scores are 644, 654 and 694. The midscore at closing was 678.
There are no new accounts on my reports, only old collection accounts(older than 5 years) that were on my reports when the loan was approved.
My question is how do i respond? My first thought is to just get a new heloc but then i would have the early termination fees that get tacked on to accounts open for less than 36 months. Has this happened to anyone else and do i have any recourse?
I read that HELOC's are now seen as very risky due to a lot of 100% financing and that they are second lien and with the way the RE market is a lot of companies are not doing them anymore at all or severly curtailing them.
Then I read this in a blog...seems HELOC are being reduced for lower FICO scores and/or reduced values in homes:
I opened a 100k heloc last May through a mortgage broker with citibank. There is now a 47k balance. This is the only loan on the property which they appraised at 230k. No missed payments or late payments, all was well until i got my statement yesterday which reduced my line from 100k to 48k. No letter, no phone call, no explanation whatsoever.
I dig out my loan documents which list the usual reasons for such an event to transpire.
1. Property value reduction
2. material change in financial circumstances:
3. citibank is notified by its regulatory agency that continued advances constitute an unsafe and unsound practice: No idea what this could mean.
So i called the Texas call line to get this rep to tell me indeed the line limit had been halved but no explanation was available. My fico scores are 644, 654 and 694. The midscore at closing was 678.
There are no new accounts on my reports, only old collection accounts(older than 5 years) that were on my reports when the loan was approved.
My question is how do i respond? My first thought is to just get a new heloc but then i would have the early termination fees that get tacked on to accounts open for less than 36 months. Has this happened to anyone else and do i have any recourse?