Why I Built MyHelocRates.com — and Why I'm Not American
My name is Mike Lucas, and I live in the UK. A few years ago I wanted to renovate my home. Like most people, I started looking into how to fund it — and I fell down a very interesting rabbit hole.
I came across the concept of a Home Equity Line of Credit. HELOCs do exist in the UK, but they are complicated, restricted, and rarely used. So I did what most UK homeowners do: I took out a traditional fixed personal loan. I borrowed a set amount upfront — whether I used every penny or not — and started paying interest on the full sum from day one. No flexibility. No ability to draw what I needed, when I needed it. Just a fixed repayment, every month, on money I hadn't yet spent.
Then I discovered how US HELOCs work: a revolving line of credit secured by the home, with borrowing available during a draw period under the terms of the agreement. The structure was very different from the fixed personal loan I had used, and it made me curious about how HELOCs actually work, what they cost, and where the risks sit.
What struck me next was how much there was to understand. A HELOC can be useful in some circumstances, but it is also debt secured by your home, with rates, fees, payment rules and lender requirements that can vary. I wanted one place that explained those moving parts clearly without treating a HELOC as automatically good or bad — and without starting from a sales pitch.
I'm not a financial adviser, mortgage broker or lender. I'm a researcher and editor with a long-standing interest in personal finance. I built my understanding from primary US sources — especially the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve and IRS — and I use lender disclosures where a particular product or term needs to be described. The aim is to separate general HELOC concepts from lender-specific rules rather than turn one lender's criteria into a universal answer.
MyHelocRates.com is what I built from that research. It is an independent, plain-English educational resource about HELOCs. The site does not originate loans, broker applications or have lender relationships. The goal is to help US homeowners understand how HELOCs work, what to verify with a lender, and what risks to consider before making their own borrowing decisions.
If you're a US homeowner trying to understand a HELOC before deciding whether to explore one further, this site was built to give you a clearer starting point.