What the experts say

Home equity lenders get stingy; Peak hours for power; Clock ticking for tax savings

Home equity lenders get stingy

During the housing boom, homeowners had easy access to their home equity via loans and lines of credit, said Jane Hodges in MSNBC.com. Now many home­owners—even those with good credit and low balances on their equity loans—are getting word from lenders that home equity lines are being scaled back or suspended. Home prices have fallen so much that many owners don’t have much equity left to tap. At the same time, lenders are far less willing to risk financing 100 percent or more of a home’s value—a practice not uncommon during real estate’s heyday. “This is the pendulum swing, back to the safe side,” says Richard Hagar, an appraiser at American Home Appraisals in Mercer Island, Wash., and an expert on mortgage fraud. Unfortunately, “there’s not much a consumer can do.”

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