Why do you think my Home Equity Line of Credit request denied?

Only people who work in lending please answer. My background: 200K/yr income. Employed for 9 years at the same very large company. I have 25 years experience in this same occupation. I own my home now for 10 years - have a 170K balance on an original $255K loan - I've been making extra $500/month principle payments religiously since I bought it, so I have something like 70% equity in my home even AFTER the recent drops in house value we've seen recently. My current mortgage payment is 1700/mo. My house has a value of $600K from 2009 recent comp sales. I have no cc debt, no car loan debt, no debt of any kind. I have no late payments on any bills ever. I pay for just about everything by credit card but I then pay the bill off every month ($4-5K mo usually). My credit rating is between 790 and 820 depending on the agency you use. I also have verifiable liquid cash and stock accounts in excess of $200K (this is not retirement money, this is after-tax hard cold cash)... so to me, Id say Im a good bet, no? I recently applied to open a HELOC for 200K and was turned down by Bank of America. They gave me this cryptic explanation "This is no reflection of your credit worthiness, you actually have excellent credit, but you don't have enough trades to meet our internal approval criteria"... I asked for that in english but they wouldn't elaborate or explain what a trade was or how many was enough..only that I didn't have enough. I haven't a clue what that means. Im shocked that Im not considered a good risk considering I actually don't need the money, so Im turning to this answer board for help... what's wrong with the picture?

5 months ago - 2 answers