Home Equity

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GUEST OBSERVER
If you’ve owned your home for a number of years, it’s likely you’ve racked up some impressive gains in home equity – that’s the difference between the property’s market value and the balance of your home loan.
This means there’s a whole stash of cash just waiting to be tapped into either through a home loan refinance or a loan top up. While it’s tempting to spend up big, treating your home as an ATM isn’t healthy. We share some smart, sensible, and downright frivolous ways to use your home equity.
Smart moves
Use equity to renovate your existing home – Quality home improvements can add to your lifestyle; save on the cost and hassle of relocating to a new home, and best of all the renovations can increase the market value of your home.
Invest in a rental property – Using your home to grow wealth? Now that’s a smart move. Tapping into equity may even mean you don’t need to save for a cash deposit.
Sensible – with strings attached
Consolidating personal debt – If you’re juggling a few credit cards, a personal loan and maybe a car loan, consolidating the lot into your home loan can streamline your finances. It means just one monthly repayment to manage, and as home loans usually have a lower rate, you’ll save on interest costs.
But – and it’s a big but – you could be turning short term debts into a long term debt and end up paying more than necessary in long term interest. Use the savings on monthly repayments to make extra home loan repayments and keep a lid on interest costs while you whittle away the loan.
ME’s 10th biannual Household Financial Comfort Report shows that more households ‘paying off or owning a home’ reported to be drawing on their home equity to ‘pay off debt’ and ‘to make ends meet’ during the first half of 2016.
Think twice 
Here today, gone tomorrow purchases – using home equity to fund a round the world vacation, a new designer wardrobe, or any purchase with no real lasting value calls for some serious soul searching. Not only will you be whittling away precious equity, you are adding the cost of long term interest to the purchases.  
The time may come when you really need that equity for must-haves rather than luxuries. So think twice and weigh up other finance options like, say, a personal loan, which will allow you to pay off big ticket purchases buys in just a few years.
Patrick Nolan is head of home loans for industry super fund-owned bank ME. You can contact Patrick <a href="https://www.mebank.com.au/personal/home-loans/home-loans/" target="_blank">here</a>. 
 
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The good, the bad and the ugly of dipping into home equity: Patrick Nolan

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There are thousands of properties across Sydney worth less than their purchase price given property values have dropped nearly 13 percent since the July 2017 peak.
Buyers who bought then for $1 million, the CoreLogic index suggests, would now have a home worth $870,000.
Values rose by around 75 percent in the five years from 2012, but CoreLogic suggests values have reverted back to mid-2016 levels.
CoreLogic has further calculated almost 270,000 Sydney properties would lose money if they happened to sell now.
Ofcourse the current sale price depends of many factors, not just the the time of purchase, and the overall market price trend. It may be that the property was bought very well. It may be that the suburb has done better than most in withstanding the downturn. It may be the type of property has escaped the brunt.
It is not just the directly impacted 270,000 who are feeling their falling household net worth. All of Sydney are.
Just how that feeling reverberates through the economy is being closely watched by economists, surplus seeking governments and the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Feeling less wealthy could affect the economy as cautious households boost savings and reduce their spending, which potentially triggers increased unemployment, and then a nasty economic spiral.
The Reserve Bank once calculated a 10 per cent increase in housing wealth raised consumption by 1.5 per cent. And some economists believe the wealth decline effect could be twice as much in impact as gains.
Owing more on the house than it is worth is known as negative equity. Selling the house for a loss is the worst of possible outcomes, but these will likely be limited to a few recent buyers whose loan-to-valuation ratios sat above 90 per cent, and whose personal circumstances have changed. Their selling could mean having to write a cheque to the bank, and then not having the deposit for another property.
<div>However negative equity will make many more home owners a prisoner in their existing property.</div>
The American National Bureau of Economic Research suggested that negative equity reduced household mobility by 30 per cent, as owners are understandably unwilling to crystallise losses.
Most recent Sydney owners will never really know if they are in negative equity, but recent interest-only mortgage borrowers are more at risk since their loan repayments have been at a lower rate. 
When a borrower’s initial interest-only period is over, clients automatically roll-over to a principle and interest (P&amp;I) loan on the variable rate, Sam White, the executive chairman at Loan Market advises.
"Very rarely will this trigger a valuation," he said. White adds when the borrower was first assessed, they would have been assessed on their P&amp;I capacity.
"They would also have been assessed at a rate higher than the actual interest rate, so as long as nothing has changed with their circumstances, they should be able to make those repayments. If the client can make their payments, the lender will support the client, even if they have negativeequity."
Mortgage brokers are aware of their client's pending reset, with White saying at that stage his brokers work with clients to ensure a smooth transition.  His recommendation is that before the borrower deals with the bank they should talk to their broker to understand what their options are and what a particular lender’s response is likely to be.
This article was first published in the Saturday Daily Telegraph. 
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