If you have telemarketers calling you on the phone repeatedly trying to get you to refinance your house, you may be dealing with equity strippers. You need to be very careful.

Equity strippers are unscrupulous lenders who make money on lending fees by using your home equity to pay their own loan fees. Typically they'll start the conversation out by saying you have 'unrealized' home equity in your home that you need 'to put to work'. Often that's a code phrase for the lender to claim some of your home equity in fees in exchange for a small decrease in your monthly house payment. In most cases refinancing makes no sense whatsoever unless you can substantially lower your mortgage interest rate.

If you've decided to refinance be sure and get several offers to compare. That way you can look at the different fees and decide which are the most reasonable. You'll be surprised about how much difference there is in loan fees.