It's almost always a mistake to cash out most of your equity by re-financing. It takes many years to regain that equity position again. I know, because my wife and I have been forced to do that once. We've regretted it ever since.

Using your house as an ATM gets a lot of folks in trouble.

I wonder what went wrong?

Despite the article's seemingly-benign list of uses, the most common reason people use their homes as ATM machines is to borrow their way into "prosperity" and buy things they can't afford. Sound familiar? Next up will be a repeat of credit cards in a pet's name and zero-down home loans.

Making it a serious felony any politician who owes a dime to anyone not American or any foreign person, leader, or government by not public disclosure. If they lie the law should be mandatory sentencing of 20 years.

Interesting story. Are we seeing a reality check being forced onto the Public with the strong probability of another Housing Value Crash? Fanny and Freddie Mac's got behind the curve in 2004 and 05' and got themselves into taking on more and more of the HELCO blowups.

Treasury is scared of the next year in the Mortgage Market. Surprised the Rethugs would not be pushing the old 125% Refie's. Barrick's Colony Capital must be having issues.

I wanted a fixed rate less than $10,000. I figured I could pay it off in less than 3 years, then sell the house and keep all my investment. But they wanted to charge me a penalty for early pay off.

It seems early pay off fines and penalties from the lender are back into vogue again. F*ck that, I used my saving instead.

Pay on it anyway you want, or lock in a fixed rate anytime.

I closed out mine last time I refinanced, it was 2.65%, with 3 locks at 7%.