I bought a vacation home two years ago, putting a portion of it on my line of credit (secured by my home) so that I would not have to sell investments. Big mistake because my credit rating cratered! It turns out that the credit rating agencies do not count these lines of credit secured by mortgages like they do mortgages. They count them like credit card limits and deduct points on your score if you use more than 25-30% of your limit. So….my 2017 resolution is to make aggressive payments on this line of credit to get the balance back to 25% of the limit, and thereby regain a good credit rating (“good” is over 750).