The continued fall out from the housing industry has seen a new ripple in the past few weeks. Home owners with home equity lines of credit that have available room to borrow are receiving letters that some or all of their borrowing capacity has been halted. The original note that many home owners signed is allowing for lenders to freeze the credit lines in areas that they deem the value of real estate is declining rapidly or if they feel a borrowers risk has increased. This will certainly catch many home owners off guard as many have secured home equity loans as a safe guard for emergencies, to cover home improvement projects or for educational expenses. This is not a practice that all lenders have undertake, but Countrywide has been rumored to have sent this notice out to over 100,000 of their clients in the past sixty days. If you need to access your equity line it may be a good idea to contact your lender and review their policy sooner that you may actually need the money to help make sure its available down the road.

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