How To Find The Right HELOC in Louisiana

Welcome everyone, Denzel Rodriguez here, your personal finance geek of the 21st century. And in today's video, we're discussing how to find the right home equity line of credit in the state of Louisiana. In this series, we are going state by state helping you find the perfect second position home equity line of credit to help you accelerate your debt years faster, save you tons of money in interest and implement the velocity banking strategy in the most efficient way. For those of you who are homeowners, and let's say you have a 30-year fixed mortgage and you have some equity available in that home, we can obtain a second position HELOC. More often than not, a second position home equity line of credit you can find at equal rates to your current mortgage. Sometimes a little bit less if it's an intro rate in the first year, 2 years, 3 years or so. And then afterwards, the rate can jump up, say above that fixed-rate mortgage that you have by a couple of points. But when you look at the overall total percentage amount of interest that's outgoing, when you factor in that 30-year fixed mortgage, that personal loan that you have, that car loan, that student loan, those credit card debts, The IRS debt that you owe. When you start stacking up all the rates of interest that you're sending to all these different institutions, by making this one switch, obtaining a home equity line of credit, again, for homeowners only, you're able to consolidate a lot of that high-interest debt, boosting cash flow immediately and staying liquid in the process because of the equity that you're obtaining via that line of credit, via the HELOC. So this series is helping you make sure that you do all the pregame work that you need to do in advance. Okay, so if we take a look at the board here, you'll notice that the left-hand side of the board does not change. This framework is bulletproof. If you do all these things, you are increasing your chances of approval for the bank that you apply for. You're increasing your chance of approval to a yes every single time. And you're also increasing your chances of getting the best terms, the best rate with these different banks across the country. So here in the state of Louisiana, I did a little research. I found 3 banks. I'm going to share my screen and just show you all of the banks. that I found that offer a home equity line of credit, and then I boiled it down to these top 3 banks. Neighbors Federal Credit Union, Baton Rouge Telco Federal Credit Union, and Home Bank were the most attractive banks in your state that I found that offer a home equity line of credit second position with the best rate and terms. As I'm recording this video in September of 2026, Interest rates are at 6.75%. That's prime. The next Fed meeting is occurring this month, September 16th, 17th, somewhere around that time. Interest rates can potentially go down, stay where they're at. I highly doubt rates are going to go up in this current administration, so I am foreseeing rates staying exactly where they're at. Prime, 6.75%, or they might cut rates a quarter tops, I would, I would imagine. If that occurs, then this video will look even better months from now. Same if you look throughout this whole series, if you look at other states, go back to the earliest videos I did in this series on how to find the right HELOC. You you would have seen that prime was at 7.5% or 7.25%, and now fast forward if you're looking for a bank in a particular state that I covered as early as last year in 2025, those same banks are offering lower rate HELOCs now. They are even better than what I illustrated on the board. So I say that, I share that with you to say that this information that I'm putting on the middle to right side of the board here can change, right? It can change. The rates can go up, they can go down, they can stay where they're at. But this framework right here, having a credit score 720 or higher, your DTI below 30%, no more than 45%, LTV staying within 70% to 90% LTV, you're always gonna get the best rates. Closing costs, we want low or no closing costs. Intro rates, if we can get a nice introductory rate, 6 to 12 months is your average. Some banks will go upwards of 3 to 5 years, and right now we can be locking in rates anywhere from as low as 1.99% to about 5.99%. I'm always looking at prime minus HELOCs, so if I can get a HELOC that is— the interest rate is based off prime 6.75% or prime minus. If it's prime plus, doesn't matter how good your credit is, doesn't matter how good your DTI is, doesn't matter how low you go on the LTV, the rate would be prime plus a margin, 0.25%, 0.5%, 1%, whatever it may be. So we want to avoid those banks. And we want to look at these banks that don't add a margin to the prime rate. Okay. Draw period 10 to 20 years. Be sure to build a relationship, become a member before you apply. Mobile banking is important. Making sure that they have a mobile app that increases velocity in terms of when we're moving money in and out of the HELOC to pay off debt and, and park our income into the line of credit and then finance expenses through it. Payment option: revolving interest only or principal and interest payments. Typically, I'll lean towards principal and interest because they often will offer an even lower rate. On the HELOC itself. If there is no incentive, you're free to choose whichever one— interest only or principal and interest. I still typically will lean towards principal and interest simply because it creates that discipline of, okay, however we're using the HELOC, we're still paying it back over time. All right, so let me share my screen with you, take you through my research. All the banks that I found. Starting with how I research, I look credit unions in your state that offer home equity line of credit. That's exactly how I'm Googling it every time. And starting with Neighbors Federal Credit Union, as you can see, max $250K, no closing costs, real competitive rate. I believe it's right at prime. They have an intro rate No application fee, 90% LTV is the max, and they have an intro rate on here. I am trying to find it for you though. Where is that? Here we go, rates. Uh-oh, my internet does not seem to be cooperating with me at the moment. You can take my word for it, I'll come back to that site in just a second. Baton Rouge, there's no intro rate period on here, but also no closing costs. Pretty competitive rate, which is prime. 90% LTV, 10-year draw. Pretty attractive, 6.75%. So they have a HELOC. That's what their website looks like. This is Home Bank. You have 2 options with Home Bank, which is pretty interesting. If you pay your closing costs, you can get upwards Of prime minus 0.375%, so a little more than a quarter. So 6.3% would be your rate if you pay the closing costs. If you don't pay the closing costs, then you're right at prime. You can run math, simple math, take that 0.375%, And compare it, how much, how much debt you owe or how much debt you would be pushing to this line of credit. And if you know it's going to take a couple of years to eliminate the amount of debt that you're trying to consolidate into the line of credit, 0.375% can be quite a bit of money in savings, right? So say it's $100,000 times 0.375%. interest. So that's $375 per year of interest that you're being charged that much less at. Okay, so you compare it to the amount of closing costs and Let's see if it shares what potentially the closing costs might be. Let's see, let's see. Read through this. Standard closing costs range $500 to $2,500. Bank pays closing costs, attorney fees, appraisal. Okay, so that's for first lien loan. Let's do— I'll just, I'll just go off that number for now, say $2,500. And let's, let's play with this a little bit. This will kind of help you figure out whether you go with paying out of pocket. So one time, let's say your closing costs are going to be $2,500, and that gets you a 6.375% Rate, 6.375%. And say you have debt that you're going to consolidate. Say you get the max credit line, $250K. And if we follow Velocity Banking rules, we're not going to leverage more than $165,000 of debt on the line of credit. You want to owe— you don't want to owe more than that. Let's say it's going to take you 4 years To pay off all the debt that you have everywhere else— personal loans, credit cards, student loans, IRS debt, car loans, you name it. And let's say all those rates are higher than 6.375%. $100,000 times 0.375% is $375,000. Times 4 is $1,500. Okay, so if you're gonna potentially— you see yourself being able to eliminate $100,000 of debt in a 4-year window, then it wouldn't make sense. To pay the closing costs upfront to have that lower rate if you're just looking at the 4 years. If you're someone that, you know, we'll go that higher number, say $165K, 0.375% times 4. Now we're getting close to break-even. All right, now we're getting close to that break-even point of saying, all right, in the first 4 years of using this HELOC, it would— I would break even in that 0.375% interest savings if this is my closing cost. If the closing cost is less than $1,500, Then you would— it would make sense because it would only take you about 3, 4 years to break even on the closing costs, just looking at the 0.375%. If you have the money to pay the closing costs and you know it's going to take you more than 4 years to eliminate all the debt that you're trying to eliminate, on top of that, let's say it takes you a full 6 years To be debt-free, and the draw period is, is 10 years. So you have additional 4 years to leverage the HELOC for investments. Now at that point, you got a 6.375% rate. Say that— say the rate didn't change, stayed right at 6.375% for 4 years. You can now leverage and borrow out of your HELOC to make more than 6.375%. Make 12%, make 15%, make 20% on different investments or start a business. So when you look at the whole picture, you can make an argument any way you slice the math. When you're looking at a 10-year window, you can make the argument makes total sense for me to pay this closing cost out of pocket almost regardless of what the closing cost is. But again, this is going to be situation case by case. If you're someone that just doesn't have the money to come out of pocket and cover closing costs, if I'm not mistaken, I believe, especially if you get the approval, I believe the bank will allow you to roll the closing costs Into the line of credit. So you can use the line of credit to pay the closing costs. You can talk with the bank about that. Usually they do allow that. I've seen that happen before, so it's usually not a problem. So that's HomeBank for you. Let me take you back to my screen here. I wanna show you some honorable mentions. We got Essential Credit Union is a bank that offers HELOC. They just didn't make it to the board because they did not reveal too much information about their HELOC product. We got EFCU Financial. They also offer HELOC. $200K is the max, interest only. Let's see, it's going to be based off of a prime To upwards of four percent plus, right? So again, not not not as attractive as some of the banks that I've seen, but it's still worthy of mentioning. We got La Capital Federal Credit Union. They have an intro rate 4.99% for 6 months, but it does start rates as low as 7%. So that's prime plus what, 0.25? And it only has a 5-year draw period, so not as attractive. Explore Federal Credit Union, they also offer HELOC They go up to 95% LTV, low closing costs. Just don't know that much more information. We have Meritus Credit Union. Again, they don't give a whole lot of information here. It's the only reason why they don't make it to the board. So I do encourage you, you live in this state, look, look these banks up, call them and see what their terms are for their HELOCs because they're not really revealing too much. They might actually have a better deal than what I have on the board. Okay, Formation Credit Union, it says call, 80% LTV. Who knows, might be a good bank. So Formation Credit Union, look that up. We'll We have Firemen's Federal Credit Union. Not as much information was being given about them. If we come over to rates here— website's moving a little, or my internet's moving actually a little too slow right now. OnPath. I just named OnPath Credit Union. I have quite a few clients in the past. Living, living in Louisiana that have used OnPath. I'm actually not the biggest fan of OnPath Federal Credit Union. They don't exactly have the best product. Home equity, 80%, low rate, but it is a bank that people have used in the past prior to finding me. Then let's just say they already had the HELOC. So we just, you know, worked with what we had. At the time. This is Campus Federal Credit Union, and they do offer prime 80%. That says how low they go, so that's another kind of honorable mention there. Then we have Signature Federal Credit Union. They're doing up to 100% LTV, which is pretty cool. This actually should have made it to the board. It says ranges from 6.5%, so it's prime minus 0.25, to upwards of 18%. So that should have been mentioned there because that's their line of credit. It's a good thing I went through this. No origination, no prepayment. Let's get clarity. Let's, let's see if this will load. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay, we got to put them on the board. Signature Federal Credit Union. So that is prime minus 0.25%. That's pretty cool. 80% LTV. Yeah, no complaints here. I'm glad I went back. You see, if you— again, if you go higher, see how they tack on points when you go higher on the LTV? So stay low, 80% LTV, you'll be at that low rate of 6.5%. Not bad, not bad. Okay, let's take it back to the board here. So out of the all the banks that we looked at there, and then let's see if before I let you go earlier I mentioned Neighbors Federal Credit Union has the 3.99% for the first 12 months. But my website was a little slow, so here we go. Just giving you the proof. You took my word for it, but I'm giving you the proof as well. First 12 months, 3.99%. Then, then we see this 6.25% rate, which is interesting. So you, you're going to want to verify with this bank, do I get the 6.25%? After the 3.99%, or is it 3.99% first 12 months and then it goes to Prime, or you forego the Intro and get a Prime minus 0.5%? Either way, very attractive product for this bank. So coming back, my top picks, I'm, I'm really leaning towards Neighbors Federal Credit Union. My, my next one is gonna be between Signature and HomeBank, and then Baton Rouge is my, my last pick. So hopefully this helps those of you who do live in the state Of Louisiana. We'll continue this series. We're almost done. Hopefully I get done before the year is over, where we have all 50 states completely covered and you have the framework. I'm working on a PDF document that you'll be able to download so you can just have with you. These are questions that you can ask, and it's this entire framework just in a nice PDF. And all you have to do is get on my email newsletter and I'll get that over to you. All right, have a blessed day. God bless, and we'll talk soon. Bye.