How To Find The Right HELOC in Maine

Hello and welcome everyone. My name is Denzel Rodriguez, your personal finance geek of the 21st century. And today we are continuing our series on how to find the right home equity line of credit in the second position. Over the next coming weeks and past weeks, we have been laser focused, going state by state, analyzing each and every bank that we can come across that offer home equity lines of credit according to my standards, according to my framework. And then we are putting those specific banks on the whiteboard that are the most attractive according to my framework and the strategy that we teach on this channel. And then I will give you my top picks for each and every state. My hope is that this will become a starting point for a lot of folks that are coming across velocity banking home equity lines of credits for the first time and wanting to know how to borrow, how to be more efficient. And just by getting the right product with the right incentives can literally mean thousands of dollars in savings back into your pocket just by getting the right tool. So with that being said, we're in the state of main. Okay. And we're going to take our attention to the whiteboard. I'm going to have you focus on the left hand side again. If this is your first time watching in this series, what you're going to notice is the left hand side of the board stays exactly the same. That is our framework. This is what we do in advance before applying at a bank. Before, before choosing a bank, you're going to set yourself up properly with your own credit and finances and you're going to know the facts, you're going to know the situation before you enter any one of these banks. You're going to know what to look for. You're going to know what's attractive, what's unattractive, you're going to know what's competitive. And then from there you'll have a list of banks just like I have here. I got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 banks in the state of Maine that I found to be worthy of the whiteboard. And then we're going to narrow our choices down to the most attractive option. All right. To run through the action items, this is, these are like non negotiables. You need to know this information before you apply for a home equity line of credit. For example, as of today, in 2025, in October, prime rate is 7.25% and will likely decrease again before the year is over. So if that happens, that puts us in an even more advantageous position for those who already have variable rate home equity lines or Credits and those who have a home equity line of credit where your interest rate is based off of prime or prime minus. If you are at a prime plus rate, when rates go up, it affects you even more. When rates go down, you really don't see a big difference. But if you're at a prime or prime minus, you benefit greatly when rates go decrease. And when rates increase, you're still at an advantage, which is very unique. So starting at the top, I want to see everybody in here with a credit score of 720 or higher, preferably before you apply for any home equity line of credit. I want your DTI to be around 30% or less, no more than 45%. And if I'm being honest, once you breach 40%, it you just really decrease your chances of getting all the incentives that come with each and every bank. Now understand that if a bank is offering a few incentives and you're like, okay, this is the bank I want to go with. This is what they're offering. But when you read between the lines, read the fine print. The incentives only apply to prime borrowers, people who have great or perfect credit score. So you got to position yourself in advance. All right? LTV stands for Loan to Value. This is referring to the amount of equity that's available in your home. Most banks do 70 to 90%, although some go as high as 95 to 100%. Keep in mind, the higher you go on your credit line amount on the ltv, most likely your interest rate will be higher, but the bank won't even tell you. I'm trying to get information with a client right now that I'm working with. Where I had them say, look, we really only need 50 grand on their home equity line of credit. They email me saying that, hey, we know we lowballed our value. It came by, it came back higher. So we're going to go with the max. And I'm like, hold on, right? We didn't communicate. This often happens with the adults. For some reason, we become children. Unfortunately, when it comes to our finances, the lack of communication, lack of understanding where you currently are. But again, I'm only 29 years old, so I'm often reminded to always respect my elders, always respect the clients that I work with. Even if they make mistakes and stumble. I have to remind myself it's part of the process. Unfortunately, people are just going to have to touch the stove to realize it's freaking hot. Unfortunately, no matter how many warnings I give to folks, no matter how many videos I put out, just is what it is for whatever reason. And I, and I continue to pray and continue to respect my elders. At the highest level, when you are approved for a home equity line of credit, sometimes you what banks will do is they'll put an initial amount in, but if the appraisal comes back, the value of your home is much higher. They'll come back to you and say, hey, do you want the max? What they won't say is if you accept the max, guess what, your interest rate will be higher. Now you're going to be at a prime plus 1%. You won't even notice until you say yes. Then you're like, oh, my rate is nine and a half percent. But on the website it said 7.25. Huh. Why did that happen? Because you went for the max. They attracted you with more debt. And the reality, when we're doing velocity banking, we don't need to use all your equity, only a small portion. We really don't for vast majority of cases, we really don't need as much as you think when it comes to doing this particular strategy. So keep in mind, when you stay between 70 and 90% LTV, typically you're going to get the best offers, the best incentives, closing costs. I want to see zero or low closing costs, 500 bucks or less. When it gets more than that, it just becomes, you know, it kind of takes away from the incentives. If I'm paying like three grand up front in closing costs, all right, and more than likely I can find you a bank that doesn't charge all that. Then we have intro rates, typically with HELOCs in the second position, you're going to see six to 12 months. In some rare cases, you'll see three to five years, which is pretty awesome. In a declining interest rate environment, if you can get a fixed home equity line of credit around 5% right now, that's going to be attractive because rates are at 7.25, so it's going to take a while. We might not even go back down to 5% prime. We might, we might not see that for years and years to come. So by you being able to lock that in for the next three to five years is something I would jump on. But keep in mind, if the five year fixed rate is at above 7.25%, that's not going to be in your favor. That's not going to be attractive. Why? Because you're in a declining interest rate environment. If you don't know what interest rate environment you're in, you're ignorant to that that can cost you thousands of dollars. So don't be afraid of the word variable as it pertains to home equity line of credit. What we can do is leverage the intro rate period, watch rates come down, you eliminate debt, you put yourself in a better position, and as rates go up, you're still benefiting because you were at an advantaged rate from the start. Okay, moving right along, we have interest rate calculation. I want to see prime 7.25 or prime minus. I don't for the most part when, when it's prime plus, they don't even make it to the whiteboard unless I'm in a really, really tough state that doesn't have a whole lot of incentives. Then it's, you know, prime plus 0.25, prime plus 0.5. I really try to avoid prime plus if at all. I try to avoid it as much as I can. The draw period is referring to how long you can use your HELOC. Typically it is 10 years. The shortest that you'll see is five years. Okay. That's the shortest time frame that you'll see. I, in some rare cases you'll see 15, 20 year draw periods. That's pretty attractive. If you can have a 20 year, 15 year HELOC at a prime minus, you're basically leveraging the equity in your home for a very long period of time at a pretty controlled interest cost interest rate. And that can not only help you get out of debt, but also help you invest that same capital over a long period of time. As we finish out the last three, you're going to want to build a relationship with the bank before you apply. Open up a checking and a savings, move your banking over to that bank. If we're going to do velocity banking to its fullest and maximize its potential, you need to be willing to do business with that new bank and drop your old bank. You want to make sure that it's mobile banking friendly. This increases velocity. If I'm able to instantly transfer money in and out of the home equity line of credit. And then finally is payment calculation. This just verifies that your HELOC is in fact a home equity line of credit and not a home equity loan, you're going to have two options, interest only or principal and interest payments. All right, Typically you're going to want to go with the principal and interest because it's going to be typically incentivized with your rate. If there's no difference the bank offers the same rate on interest only or principal and interest, then you choose whatever you want to go with. Nothing changes regarding the rate. If there's no difference in the incentive, if there is a difference, I'm going to say go with principal and interest so that you don't get prime plus with interest only heloc. You got to be careful with that. Most of the time I'm encouraging my clients to go with principal and interest. It encourages them to pay off the HELOC and not keep it leveraged unnecessarily. Now let me share with you my research. I'm going to show you my, my screen, all the banks that I looked up so far and give you my top picks. So I found a bank called Acadia Federal Credit Union, Midcoast Federal Credit Union, Evergreen, Maine. We got two banks with the same name. One's a credit union, one is a federal credit union. There is one key difference. One has a prime rate, the other has a prime minus. So I put that there on purpose just to show you. Sometimes that little extra research save you.25% when you click on the right bank. So let me share my screen and show you how I research. So I will type in credit unions in the state that I'm searching and then I'll type that. Offer a home equity line of credit in that particular state. Very important. Okay. When you do that with Google or any search browser nowadays, you got AI helping you out, which is cool. They give me a list of banks, I'll keep scrolling. Sometimes I go to page two even to find even more banks in case I, you know, don't, don't see anything. This is a bank I didn't see earlier with my researchers. Want to see what they got. 15 year old. This one's not attractive. Okay, let me show you the banks that I did find. First one is Acadia. No application fees, no premium penalties. You're able to lock in your rate for a period of time. I want to say the draw period is 10 years, but I'm not certain. I don't know if there's an annual fee. It wasn't showing. I don't know if there's closing costs. It didn't show that. I do know it's mobile banking friendly. They have a 3.99 intro rate for one year. Pretty cool. That offer does go away by the end of the month. So if you are in the state of Maine, this might be a bank you may want to put on your list now where it gets even better, more attractive. You read down here, the current non promotional APR is as low as 6.75%. That's extremely attractive. So not only do you get an intro rate of 3.99%, but when it's done it goes to a prime minus 0.5%. Again, we don't know what closing costs are, are involved, we don't know if there's an annual fee and we don't know what the draw period is. But based on just the details that we do have off the website, it's worthy of the whiteboard. Next you have Mid Coast Federal Credit union. They have two kinds of HELOCs. They have a home equity line of credit where you lock, you get a fixed rate four or five years. So it's an intro rate technically fixed for five years, but the draw period is only five years. You do get a fixed rate of 6.875%. That's if you qualify. So to me, I personally don't love that. Going to be honest with you, I think I would rather stick with the variable rate. Get the three point. Well no, there's no intro rate on this. But if I had to choose this bank, I'm coming over here where it says current APR is low 7.25%. Although I start off higher, the draw period is longer. And if rates do come down at least a half a point, guess what, the comparison to this HELOC at 6.875, I, I stay there. So if I have a fixed home equity line of credit, I don't get to take advantage of rates coming down. Okay, what did I do here? Sorry. Yeah, so I don't get to take advantage of rates coming down. If I lock myself in to a pretty high fixed rate of 6.875%. It only takes a half a percent for the feds to decrease rates, which can happen in the next year or less. So I'm not comfortable personally locking in a high fixed rate just for the sake of it being fixed. Which is why in this example, if we're just looking at this bank alone, Mid Coast, I'm encouraging my clients go with the variable rate in this example here. All right, so just keep that in mind. So let's bring it back. So that was midcoast 80% LTV mobile banking, friendly 10 year draw, nothing crazy, don't love it, but it's worthy of the whiteboard because it's prime and we got 80% LTV. Notice how if you go higher to 90 they bump you up prime plus 0.5. So you got to be careful with that. Don't fall for that trick. Here's another bank just showing you my research called People's Choice Credit Union. They didn't make it to the board because they're not giving any information. There's literally nothing for me to go off of. I don't know what they offer, I can't see the rates. So we're going to close that. But I figure I'd just show you anyways. Same thing. We got another bank called UCU in Maine. They're sharing information here, but there's no concrete information like what's the rate, what's the draw period? You know, they're talking about HELOC versus Home Equity Loan and that's. That's it. So they might have a great offer. It's worth calling to verify. But for now they're not going to make it to the whiteboard. We have another bank called Atlantic Federal Credit Union and they also did not make it to the whiteboard. As you can see, prime plus 0.25% on their principal and interest only HELOC. So again, once I find a bank in your state that's prime minus anything that's prime plus is just not going to make it to the whiteboard. Here's the next bank that nearly knocked me off my feet. I was like oh yeah, this is cool. So we have a home equity line of credit with a bank called Evergreen where you can potentially get a 6.25 interest rate. Ladies and gentlemen, that my friend, is a prime minus 1%. This is a rare find. Rare, very rare. Do we see prime minus 1%? No annual fee, access to funds 24,7. That's mobile banking friendly. That's great. We like that. There's no intro rate and as far as ltv, that's not explicitly shared here. As far as draw period, we don't know. We do see a fee of $275 will be processed for all closed home equity loans and lines of credits. So there is some cost associated with it. There might be more costs associated with it, but let me tell you at prime -1% I'm very attracted to that because that's for the life of the loan, for the life of the draw period. So if it's a 10 year draw, that's amazing. So Evergreen Main State Credit Union, they're coming in at an attractive offer. We got a 5.99 intro rate for 12 months. Not bad at all. We like that. And if we keep reading goes into the tool a little bit, loan amount of 100,000. I don't think that's the max I think they're giving us a example here. But this does assume a credit score of 740 or higher. So it does have a high requirement to get that prime minus. Absolutely worth it. Absolutely worth it. So keep that in mind. It's worth waiting to potentially lock in a low rate, 5.99. And then if we keep reading, we go to find their rates and look at that. As low as prime minus 0.5%. Very attractive. Very attractive. Next bank was Town and Country Federal Credit Union. They have a prime rate on their interest only product and their principal and interest product. And that's about all I can pull off the site. That was about it. But then come over to another bank called Town and Country Credit Union and I'm like, this is a different site, same name, 10 year draw as low as 7%. So prime minus zero point to 5%, 90% LTV. Potentially. Don't know that for a fact, but let's transition to top picks. All right, so Maine came to play, they came to compete. We like that. We can start doing process of elimination and we can say, all right, clearly there are banks with intro rates and prime minus. So we can cut off Town and country and we can cut off Mid coast. Those are two banks that were at prime. So now we're down to four banks left. We have prime minus 0.25 prime minus 0.5 prime minus 0.5 prime minus 1%. We can cut off Town and Country Credit Union. Now we're left with preferences. These three banks are awesome. Based on the information that we have, the deal breakers will be. Once we get clarity on how much each bank's closing costs are, we know for a fact most likely none of them are no closing costs. We were pretty confident that's not the case. So they all have some closing costs. We know only one bank has a no annual fee. We don't know that about Maine or Acadia, but we can still do a process of elimination based off of what we have. So with Maine and Acadia, you've got 5.99 12 months, 3.99 12 months prime minus 0.5% prime minus 0.5%. Closing costs. Closing costs. Know what the draw period is, don't know what the LTV is, don't know what the annual fee is. But it's safe to say that Maine takes third place on the board. We can say main takes third place because their intra rate is higher than Acadia's. All right, now we're left with Evergreen and Acadia. This is going to come down to preference, do you prefer to have a high, a lower rate to start with for the next 12 months that you could potentially dial in on and then be at prime minus 0.5%? You might lean more in that direction. If you have extremely high rates that you're trying to pay down. If you are planning on, you know, you ran your numbers and maybe it's not going to take you as long to get out of debt, then you might lean more towards Acadia. If you're thinking more long term, Evergreen is going to be your friend. No annual fee for sure. The there is some closing cost that they disclosed. We know it's mobile banking friendly. It's Most likely a 10 year draw. Prime minus 1%. If rates continue to go down even a quarter, you would be at a 6% rate while everybody else in the economy is at 7, 7 and a half and up. So in my opinion, if you asked me, Denzel, you live in the state of Maine. Which bank are you going with for? For me, I'm going with Evergreen. Evergreen is my top pick. Acadia is my number two, Maine is number three. And those my friends are top picks for finding you the right home equity line of credit in the second position in the state of Maine. Stay tuned in. I promise you I will cover your state. Please continue to watch these videos. If you're just coming across this for the first time, look at the other states because sometimes I will highlight banks that cover four states, 10 states, 20 states, 15 states. So there are banks out there that are competitive, that are bigger when we come across a state that's not as competitive as Maine. So if you look back in the playlist, there's certain states that are not really offering a whole lot. When we see that we're able to expand our research, go with a bigger bank, a bank that might be doing a sponsor and see what we can find. What's going to happen most of the time, the local banks are always going to win for the most part and it just takes a little bit more digging. Got to go to page two of Google, page three even to find what we need. Other than that, I will leave you for the rest of the evening. Thank you so much for tuning in. God bless and I will see you again soon. Bye now.