Home equity or REFI cash out???

[Drew Denham]

My primary residence is worth approx. $220K (owe $135K) and I'm looking to pull out the equity to reinvest.

30 year fixed @ 3.75%

Are there banks that offer better than 80% LTV?

Huntington bank said they offer 2nd liens up to 100% LTV based on credit scores.

Has anyone had any recent success with a certain bank?

Thanks!  

[Michaela G.]

Here's something to keep in mind: 

Commercial lines of credits don't show up on your credit report (at least mine doesn't and my banker says that commercial ones don't)

If you're getting a HELOC it will show on your credit report. And since it's not a firm amount for a set number of payments, it won't be coded like a mortgage, but often it's coded like a credit card.

A big part of your credit score is determined by your utilization of your total credit. Meaning, if you have a total of 100K in available credit (credit cards, credit lines), you should ideally always keep it under 30% (30K) utilization or you can ding your credit score badly and can make it difficult to find financing for other things. 

Soooo, what I'm trying to say is that a refinanced mortgage doesn't have as much potentially negative effect on your score, as long as you make the pre-determined payments, while a credit line can really negatively effect you, if you use it to buy other real estate and use too much of it and now your score is too low and you can't refinance that property into a mortgage. 

Just some food for thought.