Anonymous wrote:Interesting - I'm not the OP, but we bought with 10% down on a VA Loan and used additional money to make internal updates. we didn't realize that a HELOC required higher LTV, and didn't want to wait to replace our roof (which we had been told needed to be replaced in the next year or 2 when we had it inspected), especially considering how crappy the weather has been in the past year. The ones that will do 90% or higher would be VERY helpful to us, so that we can clear the debt from our credit cards (we used 0% offers to pay until we could figure this out) without having to touch our savings, which we prefer to keep for a true emergency. Neither of us gets bonuses any more (OK, I got $500, but that covered some christmas stuff and that's it), so $10K is not all that easy to just pay out of monthly cashflow.
If you're only after 10K, I'm not sure a refi would necessarily be worth it to you, unless you are getting a much better rate. There are closing costs to any refi, and often the ones that let you do a very high ltv--like the Navy Fed product--require an additional funding fee, which I think works out to be 1.75% of the loan amount. It's worth it to us to refi, because our rate is dropping by a lot (we bought 6 years ago), but in your situation, might it be better to consider using some of the savings, and putting the rest on a low interest credit card?