How Jennine Used Equity to Achieve Her Small Business Dreams

Jennine is a Minnesota homeowner who found herself out of work at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and, like so many other homeowners at the time, struggled to make her mortgage payments.

So she started looking into some traditional ways of tapping into her equity, including a home equity line of credit (HELOC) and a cash-out refinance. But, being unemployed, she kept running into the same issue: she was unable to qualify.

“I looked into refinancing. I looked into taking out a home equity line of credit. I looked at trying to get a second mortgage. I explored every possible option, and because I was unemployed, no one was willing to help,” she explained. “Nobody would give me the opportunity to take out a loan or refinance because I didn’t have an income.”

Finding the Right Opportunity

Lucky for Jennine, a friend saw an ad for Hometap and told her about it. She then decided to explore the possibility of a home equity investment, which could give her access to her home equity in cash in exchange for a percentage of her home’s future value. Thanks to Hometap’s flexible qualification criteria (such as lack of income requirements), she was approved for an Investment and began the process.

Jennine had never done any home financing on her own before, so she wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but she appreciated both the simplicity of the experience and the guidance of her dedicated Investment Manager.

Once she received her funds, she was able to make her mortgage payments and get back to focusing on her family.

“The best part about it was that I didn’t have a monthly payment. It was a breath of fresh air. It literally gave us the opportunity to continue to live our life.”

When she was ready, Jennine settled her Investment with the sale of her home. The process for settling her investment felt much like it did when she first applied: quick, smooth, and transparent — Jennine appreciated that she was able to use Hometap’s settlement calculator ahead of time to determine the amount she would owe, so there were no surprises.

Funding Solopreneurship

Three years after settling her first investment, Jennine was ready to take the plunge into entrepreneurship with a business idea that she’d been stewing on since buying her next home. With the ease of her first investment still fresh in her mind, she decided to turn to Hometap again to help get her business off the ground.

After receiving her second Investment from Hometap, she launched Safe Paint, a tool she dreamed up while painting the exterior of her new home, and crossed some other financial goals off her list, as well.

“Hometap enabled us to continue to pay for my daughter’s college education,” said Jennine, “and it enabled me to be able to get a patent on a product that I’d been working on for several years.”

After her two successful home equity investments, Jennine has now recommended Hometap to several of her neighbors, and hopes to help others understand how an Investment might be able to help them reach their own financial goals.

Interested in finding out how much of your equity you might be able to tap into with a home equity investment? It takes less than two minutes to get an Estimate.

Disclaimer: This homeowner was compensated for providing Hometap with an interview about her Investment experience.