Founded in 2015, Point is a company that offers a Home Equity Investment (HEI) up to $500,000 in return for a percentage of your home’s appreciation. It has a 30-year term, but you can pay back the loan at any time without any prepayment penalties.
There’s no monthly payments, applying online is straightforward, and it’s available to those with mediocre credit. The company has great reviews and its website provides many useful resources, as well.
Loan types: Home Equity
Loan products: Home Equity Investment (HEI)
APRs start from: Contact loan officer for a quote
Minimum credit score: 500
Repayment terms: 30-year term—exit the partnership anytime by paying back the loan amount plus the percentage of your appreciation you owe to Point.
Point lets you borrow anywhere from $25,000 to $500,000, and has a straightforward online application that only takes a few minutes to complete. It has a 30-year term and gets mainly positive reviews on resources like Trustpilot.
Unfortunately, it’s only available in about half of US states and has several fees you're responsible for paying, such as a home appraisal fee and escrow fee.
To qualify for a HEI with Point, you need to:
If you’re eligible, begin the process by clicking “Prequalify now” on the Point website. After entering your home’s address and approximate value, provide your personal information like name, email, and phone number, and click “View my offer.”
If the company can’t obtain your credit profile with your name and address alone, it’ll ask for the last 4 digits of your social security number. In some cases, this will work, but in others, the form also asks for your estimated mortgage balance and credit score.
After that, you’ll receive a detailed offer that tells you how much you’re able to borrow and a slider that shows your estimated pricing. Freely adjust the borrowed amount to see how it changes the percentage of future appreciation you’ll owe.
There’s also a cost estimator that uses the borrowed amount and the date you’re planning to buy back your equity to determine how much you’ll pay in different scenarios.
Once you’ve chosen how much you want to borrow, click “Continue my application”. The next few pages ask you about:
Once you submit the application, you’ll have to provide documents like proof of home ownership or government ID to verify the details you’ve provided. Next, an appraiser visits your home to determine the value, and Point finalizes the terms and schedules a time to complete the deal.
The application only takes a few minutes at most, but closing takes a minimum of 3 weeks.
Point only offers a HEI, which is an agreement to sell a portion of your home’s future value for a lump-sum cash payment. You can use the funds to pay for home improvements, deal with high-interest debt, invest in your education, or pay for anything else you need.
Some features that help Point stand out include:
No monthly payments: Unlike many other home equity borrowing solutions, there are no monthly payments to worry about.
No income requirement: You don’t have to earn a certain amount to qualify for a HEI.
Accepts subpar credit: While many solutions require good or great credit, Point’s HEI is available to anyone with a 500 credit score or higher.
Flexible 30-year term: Point’s HEI comes with a 30-year term, but you’re free to pay it back early with no penalties.
Wide borrowing range: Point offers between $25,000 to $500,000, so it’s a solid choice for homeowners with different needs.
With a Point HEI, there’s no traditional interest rate or monthly payments. Instead of paying back the loan slowly over time (plus interest) like with home equity loans, you’ll pay it back all at once, plus a predetermined percentage of your home’s appreciation.
The amount you are responsible for paying varies depending on how much you borrow, how long it takes you to pay the amount back, and how much your home appreciates over the years.
The percentage of equity you will share generally ranges from as low as a few percent if you borrow a small amount relative to your overall equity, up to over half of the future appreciation if you borrow a larger amount.
While there’s no monthly payment required, there are several fees you’ll have to pay. These include:
In addition to sharing in your appreciation gains, the company also shares the losses. So if your home value decreases over time, your repayment may be lower than the initial amount you borrowed.
To protect itself in these cases, Point applies a 27% home value risk adjustment to offset price volatility and protect its investment. So if your home’s appraised value is $500,000, you will begin sharing in any appreciation from $365,000 for the purpose of its investment. What you pay back is based on how much your home appreciates from this amount.
The HEI from Point lets you borrow up to $500,000 and provides a 30-year term, but you can pay it off anytime without a penalty. Getting started is incredibly easy, even if you have subpar credit. There are multiple ways to reach out for support, and the website has many useful resources.
It’s a solid option if you need money and want to maintain full control and ownership of your home, but it comes with several fees and you’ll have to share the future appreciation value of your home.
You can reach out to Point over the phone at 888-764-6823 or through its online contact form. Phone support hours are 8am-6pm (PST) on weekdays, but there’s no customer service on the weekends.
In addition, the Point website contains plenty of beneficial resources. This includes Point Research (offers insights into the housing market and homeownership trends), and some financial tools and calculators.
There’s also a blog that covers topics like home ownership, financial wellness, home equity, and many others.
The company maintains an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau, and a 4.4 rating on Trustpilot, with well over 1,500 reviews. Positive comments mention the ease of getting started and the helpfulness of customer service agents.