Unemployed, no debt, house worth 1.3 million

[Sam August]

Hi, I’m in an unusual situation. I cashed out of crypto to buy the house of my dreams. The problem is I sacrificed my retirement money to do so.

Ive been unemployed for 5 years and want to avoid going back to work. I absolutely love real estate and interior design. Given that I have no debt and own a house worth 1.3 million, what are some approaches to leveraging my house with a HELOC to obtain cash flow to avoid employment? Ideally I want to make 60k - 100k a year as soon as possible to continue the lifestyle I'm accustomed to.

One constraint is that I don’t want to house hack. I want to stay in my house without bringing on any tenants.

Thank you!

[Chris Seveney]

Quote from @Sam August:

Hi, I’m in an unusual situation. I cashed out of crypto to buy the house of my dreams. The problem is I sacrificed my retirement money to do so.

Ive been unemployed for 5 years and want to avoid going back to work. I absolutely love real estate and interior design. Given that I have no debt and own a house worth 1.3 million, what are some approaches to leveraging my house with a HELOC to obtain cash flow to avoid employment? Ideally I want to make 60k - 100k a year as soon as possible to continue the lifestyle I'm accustomed to.

One constraint is that I don’t want to house hack. I want to stay in my house without bringing on any tenants.

Thank you!

OK. What everyone else failed to mention is no bank will give you a HELOC without income. So you can have $5M in equity but if you have zero income then they will not give you a loan.

A private lender may provide financing but its owner occupied so that gets thrown out.

If you are over 55, you could get a reverse mortgage - that is really your only other option. 

As mentioned the other option is to sell and downsize.