Three things drive a second mortgage or HELOC approval: your equity, your credit, and the specific lender's program. The first two you can size up quickly. The third is why a clean one-size answer does not exist. - Credit. You generally want a score above 680 for solid terms. Some programs go down to 640, a few as low as 620, but terms deteriorate fast at those levels: lower allowed loan-to-value, meaning you can borrow against less of your equity, and a materially higher rate. Stronger scores, up through the high-700s tier, unlock better loan-to-value and pricing. - Equity. How much you can pull depends on how much of your home's value the program lets you borrow against on top of your first mortgage. - The lender. First mortgages have a deep, standardized market; Fannie and Freddie loans price within a narrow band across many investors. Second-lien programs and HELOCs vary widely by lender and depend on loan amount, documentation type, occupancy, and other specifics. That variability is why we do not quote a single rate for them. The right move is to review your actual numbers against a few programs, which is what the free Roadmap conversation is for: about 20 minutes where we run your real numbers.