Yes, whenever it is recorded behind an existing first mortgage: a home equity line of credit is secured by a junior lien on the same house, and a junior lien is exactly what the phrase second mortgage describes, though a line taken on a house with nothing else against it is a first lien instead.
Four routes leave the first mortgage where it is: a home equity line of credit, a fixed-rate home equity loan, a home equity investment that sells a share of the future value, and a reverse mortgage for an owner 62 or older; selling is the fifth and the only one that converts all of it.
There is no single waiting period: a conventional rate-and-term refinance has no agency seasoning rule at all, a conventional cash-out needs the first mortgage being paid off to be at least 12 months old, and an FHA streamline or VA IRRRL needs roughly 210 days and six payments made.
Public figures put a refinance at roughly two to five percent of the loan amount, about $7,000 to $17,500 on a $350,000 loan, though part of what appears on the closing statement is prepaid money that comes back rather than a cost at all.
It is a refinance of an existing FHA or VA loan into a new one of the same kind with reduced documentation, usually no appraisal and often no income verification, allowed only after the loan has seasoned and only where it passes the program's net tangible benefit test, and never with cash out.
A guide walks a whole process at length and is written about Nevada, because that is where Kouzr operates. A glossary term defines a word. These are the questions in between: national, answerable in a sentence, and worth the page it takes to say why the sentence is true. Where the honest answer needs figures, the figures are ours and the page says which market they are from. Nothing here is legal, tax or lending advice.
