On Jan 23, 6:23*pm, Tony Hwang wrote:
Cindy Hamilton wrote:
On Jan 22, 3:15 pm, *wrote:

8%? *I'm sorry. *Mine is currently under 5% - lower than my mortgage,
actually. *Of course, it got cut off back when everything hit the fan,
despite the fact that the only time it was ever used was to purchase
the house. *Y'see, I live in one of those areas where houses are so
silly expensive that it made more sense to use a HELOC to allow me to
purchase the house, rather than waiting until I'd saved enough for a
20% down payment. *through the weirdnesses of our tax code, I'm paying
off the HELOC faster than I'd have been adding to my savings account
had I continued to rent, with the added benefit that i'm living in a
house that I own, so I can improve it at my leisure rather than having
to wait.

Well, it's a fixed-term loan rather than a HELOC. *My 15-year fixed-
rate
primary mortgage is about 5.25%. *I'm about halfway through it, and
I'm really
starting to see some progress on the principal when I get my monthly
mortgage statement. *The equity loan will be paid off this June.

Houses here (Ann Arbor, MI) are not that expensive. *The average is
about
$200,000, give or take a few tens of thousands. *That's usually a
three-bedroom
with two baths.

I don't mess around with revolving credit where my house is at stake.
Too
much risk for this old Midwesterner.

Cindy Hamilton

Whoa!
200K for a house?

Actually, for about that much money I got a three-bedroom house
(one bath), built of concrete block, faced three sides with granite
and
one with brick on two acres. It was built in 1948 by a mason, so his
first choice wasn't stick construction (which is much more common
around here.) I wish he'd put a few more pieces of granite in his
lunch
pail, so that the back could be granite, too

Here's a picture taken in early spring 2000:
http://www.adi.com/~hamilton/house/o...OfProperty.jpg
It shows a little less than half of our spread.

Also came with a detached concrete block
two-car garage and a 16x16 wooden shed (probably built from a kit).
Dozens of trees. Five miles from my job; a little less than that to
my
husband's, giving each of us a ten-minute commute. Good jobs: I'm
a programmer; he's a... well, his associate's degree was in electro-
optics,
but he does the work of an engineer much of the time.

I just don't understand why everybody (and their employers) isn't
flocking to southeast Michigan. It's a great place to live.

Cindy Hamilton

For that, we can't even find a 2 bedroom condo any
where in the city. Average house price here is 470K CAD. Mine is about
twice that, of course I did not pay that much back in '94 when I had it
built to my specs. I don't have mortgage. Just a line of credit against
the house @2.75%. Just as a rainy day fund. One thing I notice is bank
wants me to draw from it. If the account stays inactive, they don't like
it.