Wait…I have equity in my home?

A few weeks ago, our in house lender and I were chatting about the market and he asked me, “Do you have 20% equity in your house”? “If you do, you might be able to do a refinance and move your loan to conventional”. It never crossed my mind that we might have equity in our home until he said that. I asked Harvey to run the comps for me and when he did, the numbers showed that we just might! We went ahead and started the re-fi process, filled out the forms, ordered the appraisal and had high hopes that the appraisal would come back at value, if not higher. We wanted the value to come in around $235,000 – $245,000 and when the value came in yesterday, it came in at $250,000! We purchased our home in September, 2011 for $195,000 and were shocked that the value had come up that much! The Las Vegas market has definitely changed in the last 2 years and definitely to our advantage. Thanks to our lender and friend, we will be saving a little bit of money each month and will be able to pay down our principle loan amount. Thank you John Ingram w/ New American Funding for the information and help with our re-finance. We couldn’t have done this without your expertise!