@Mike Gel It's the priority / order of who gets paid in the event of a default & foreclosure sale. The 1st lienholder will recover all of their money first. If there is any left after that, the 2nd lienholder is then in line, and so on.
Most mortgage companies want to be in 1st position, and therefore have the greatest chance in recovering their money in the event of a default. Typically loans in a 2nd position would have a higher interest rate, to compensate for the extra risk by being in 2nd position.
I don't know of any lender that would take a 3rd lien position @Larry Garber. If there's sufficient equity, why not take a larger HELOC in 2nd position and use the proceeds to retire the existing 2nd lien?
@Larry Garber no bank wants to be in anything but 1st position. You might want to check with some hard money lenders, but you have a tough climb on this one.
HELOC's are typically Always second position. The only real possibility is to get a bigger, 2nd position heloc, paying off the existing 2nd position, assuming there is sufficient equity. HML's typically won't lend in 2nd, let alone 3rd position.
@Mike Gel It's the priority / order of who gets paid in the event of a default & foreclosure sale. The 1st lienholder will recover all of their money first. If there is any left after that, the 2nd lienholder is then in line, and so on.
Most mortgage companies want to be in 1st position, and therefore have the greatest chance in recovering their money in the event of a default. Typically loans in a 2nd position would have a higher interest rate, to compensate for the extra risk by being in 2nd position.
I don't know of any lender that would take a 3rd lien position @Larry Garber. If there's sufficient equity, why not take a larger HELOC in 2nd position and use the proceeds to retire the existing 2nd lien?
@Larry Garber Usually if you have a 1st and a 2nd mortgage, there isn't even enough equity left to make getting a HELOC possible/worthwhile even if a lender was willing to do one in 3rd position (which isn't likely).
However, if you've had these mortgages for a long time and paid them down so much that there is a lot of equity somehow, why not refi them into a single mortgage? Then you'd be much more likely to be able to get a HELOC as there are plenty of lenders that will do them in 2nd position.
Maybe it Would make sense to refi, especially with today's rates. Definitely something to look into you. I'm 69 years old & don't think I'd have time to recoup the refi charges, etc, but if it made it possible to go ahead with ...