Hi all,
I am hoping someone here can offer some advice on how I should proceed. Any help is greatly appreciated. (this is my first post btw)
This is me in a nutshell:
Fico Score: 667
Age: 25 (one of the reasons my score is low, according to myFico)
I have a single 30 day late charge reported on my CC (the one mentioned below) from 2001.
Within the past 12 months I co-signed with my brother to purchase his first home (we closed in Jan). The credit inquiries from that have affected my score also, according to myFico.
My one CC has a limit of 6000 and a balance of 4100.
I purchased my first home over 2 years ago with an 80/15 (30 yr fixed for 80% plus 15% as a HELOC). The HELOC is now up to an astounding 12.3% on a 28,000 balance. The interest payment each month is hovering just over 300 dollars! Its tearing away at my insides, I must get rid of it, just like the CC balance.
I have watched the sale of a few comparable houses in adjacent streets over the past year, and looking at it very conservatively, I believe that I am sitting on about 40,000 in equity (about 29% of what I owe in total for both mortgages). I would like to refinance for the purpose of getting rid of the HELOC and consolidating the house payment into one monthly payment on a 30 yr fixed. I do not wish to take out any of the equity as cash and I would like to see a rate around 6.25 or lower of course (but I expect low sixes)... the rate I have now on the 30 year fixed is 5.75.
So here are my questions:
Should I wait until I can have my CC paid down to within 10% of the limit to pursue the refinance?
According to what I have read in some posts on these forums, couldn't I try to get a CLI on the CC and reduce the ratio of balance/limit?
Would that be worth while even if I could double the credit limit to say, 12,000?
Would doing that before trying to do a refinance affect my ability to get approved?
I hope I didn't drag this out too much, but I wanted to lay out as much info as I could to get the best responses from you guys.
Thanks in advance,
Rob