Merritt Island is an interesting town to live in. You can watch space shuttle launches from your front porch, as Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral share the island with the community and with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is another interesting place. It is one of the few places where you can see dolphins, sea turtles, manatee and the rare Florida panther.
Merritt Island is a great place to live for more reasons than its interesting activities. The unemployment rate is low and poverty is rare. The town is bordered by the Indian and Banana Rivers, and the island is in the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway. Beautiful beaches and perpetual summers makes it feel like you are on vacation all the time.
The value of Merritt Island homes has increased astronomically in the past couple of years. There has been a better ROI on these homes than on just about any other investment, and a lot of homeowners want to take advantage of that. As a homeowner, you can capitalize on your home’s equity in several ways.
Sell and Move Up
A lot of people are choosing this option. At first look, it does not seem to make sense—even though you can sell your home at a good price, you will pay a good price to buy a new one, too. The deal is, you will have equity when you sell your home, which makes for a good sized down payment on a nicer home and, with today’s lower interest rates, your payments might not be that much higher.
Refinance
You can refinance to decrease your interest rate and save yourself some money. If you really want a nicer home, though, you can remodel instead of moving. When you refinance, you can borrow at least 80 percent of your home’s appraised value. With the money remaining after you pay off the first mortgage, you can remodel and get the home you want without the hassle of selling and buying another one.
Home Equity Loan
If you refinance and cash out your equity, you lose it, of course. There are a couple of ways to use your equity for remodeling or other purposes without completely letting go of it. You can get a home equity loan, or second mortgage. You are still using your equity as security for the loan, but the loan will probably have a low, fixed interest rate and be paid off in ten or twenty years. You will have two mortgages and two house payments though.
You can also get a home equity line of credit. Instead of taking out the loan as a lump sum, you set up an account that you can draw against. You only borrow and pay interest on what you need at the time.
Whether you buy a new home, refinance, or take out a home equity loan, you will take out a mortgage. There are two main types of mortgage—fixed and adjustable rates.
Fixed rate mortgages keep the same interest rate for the life of the loan. Shorter term mortgages, like home equity loans, almost always have a fixed rate.
The interest rate on adjustable rate mortgages does not remain the same; it adjusts at specific intervals. It will almost certainly increase at the end of the introductory period, but could either increase or decrease after that, depending on what current real estate lending trends are. Adjustable rate mortgages are usually less expensive during the first five to ten years, the introductory period of the loan.
The first step to getting a mortgage of any kind is to choose a lender. That is a step you can take right now by completing the form on this page.
