If you have defaulted on some of your credit card payments or other bills and have kept up your mortgage payments on time, you may be able to refinance your home even with bad credit. You may want to refinance your home in order to take equity out for debt consolidation, such as paying off credit cards or auto loans, or you may want to refinance just to have a lower payment that you can pay on time.

Your original home loan may be at a higher interest rate than is being offered at the time you are considering refinancing. With bad credit, you are not likely to receive the lowest interest rate, but you will probably be able to refinance since you own the home and you have equity in it. If mortgage rates go down, it may be a good idea to take advantage of refinancing, since a lower payment will help with debt consolidation.

Lenders may consider a second mortgage if you have paid your first mortgage on time and your credit is improving. It takes a long time to repair bad credit, but if the lender sees signs of improvement, they are more likely to give you the second loan to pay off your bills and reduce debt.

This is where a household budget is critical. If you want to improve your bad credit, you must make all available efforts to make all payments on time. Otherwise your new debt will be much higher than your old debt and you will be worse off financially than you were before. Refinancing is possible even with bad credit, but you must be smart about it.