Have any of you ever financed repairs and cosmetic work through credit cards that offer 0% interest for 12 months?
The HML I am looking at will allow us to put up to 20k in an escrow account, that we don’t have to use or pay interest on until we use. However, alot of the repairs are just labor intensive that we will be doing ourselves and we are looking at the option of putting the materials on 0% credit cards, just to carry the cost and have less out of pocket and avoid the HML interest rates.
Any thoughts?
Many people do that, which is why many investors work to get high credit lines. You can even use your zero interest for downpaymment money as well. Many cards will charge 3% of the transaction with a cap of $75 and its just like writting a check into your bank account and the money is there the next day. it is great. Remember though, many credit cards have a min. payment of 2-4% of the balance, so if you decide to pull 20K from the card, you will have a payment inthe $400 a month range you need to cover. But still better than any interest rate an when you sell you pay off the card.
If you have the ability to fund the repairs yourself (and I think the cards are a great approach) then why not use a conventional 100% loan to purchase instead of a HML? It’ll cost you about 1/2.