Financing your kitchen.

Through the miracle of modern technology my lovely spouse submitted a virtual application for a home equity loan this morning. At this point however it makes a better story to back up a about a month.

One month ago:
The wife was bothering me about getting the home equity line of credit to pay for this new kitchen, so I relented and walked into the local CitiBank and asked to speak to a representative, because of course, this is what you did when you wanted a loan, you walk into a bank and say that you are a good person and you promise to pay them back if the give you the sack of cash with the $ on the outside.

I thought this was true, and most of all my wife thought this was true.

Apparently CitiBank does not think this is the way things work anymore, because they were really happy to give us the line of credit, but for the best rate you needed sign up online.

We felt really bad for the guy in the bank because his honesty lost him a "sale", but 1/2 point is a big deal when you are borrowing a chunk of cash.

Additionally, you get 1/4 point reduction for the first 2 months you use the line of credit.

Now, I don't know but this seems a little dysfunctional. I need to sign up at home and not plan on having the loan until the last minute, because by the time we start to use the line of credit it will be about the time of construction and wouldn't want to waste the 2 month discount.

In a normal world you would think you line up the credit long before you need it, and can do it on a handshake.

The end of the story is that you STILL need to fax your signature over anyway, because eLoans only goes so far, but now at least we have a loan.