Last week, I was listening to KGO talk radio, and the guests were a local man and his lawyer. Jeff Schulken, who owns a home in Cupertino had his HELO abruptly canceled by Chase, even though he was well qualified to repay the loan...in fact, he had been paying more than the minimum every month..., and had plenty of equity in his home. The Schulkens are part of a growing number of homeowners in the Bay Area and around the country whose banks take away the financial safety net they counted on.
Now some of those homeowners are fighting back. The Schulkens have filed suit against JPMorgan Chase, charging that the bank unfairly terminated their home equity line of credit even though the couple provided documents showing that they could repay the money. In the early part of this decade, home equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, were a regular feature of Silicon Valley homeownership. Longtime owners sitting on a few hundred thousand dollars in equity could easily borrow against it to remodel, pay their children's college tuition or use as a rainy-day fund.
My bank made a special effort to offer me one when I paid off my mortgage a few years ago...How times have changed!
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