There weren’t a lot of fees, so I signed up.

Since then, I’ve only had to tap the line once, and I paid off the balance in just a few months.

Now I’m receiving letters from the thrift’s Chairman and CEO Marc Stefanski, asking me to “consider closing this line of credit” because I’m not using it.

The letters are very nice and say that “Third Federal is not requiring you to close your home equity line of credit.”

But they seem to be coming every month, in lieu of a statement.

If I don’t heed Third Federal’s request to voluntarily close the account, I have to wonder if the thrift will decide I’m just too dim to get it and cancel my line of credit.

Hundreds of thousands of homeowners have certainly had their home equity lines reduced or canceled over the past few years.

I have to wonder if I’ll be joining them.

Ah, there’s nothing like hypocrisy among the rich and powerful.

And the Mortgage Bankers Association provided an easy target for a segment about strategic default on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart last week.

The MBA preaches that it’s morally and ethically wrong for homeowners to deliberately stop paying their mortgage just because they owe more than their homes are worth.

Yet every indication is that the Mortgage Bankers did exactly that last February.

The association appears to have forced a short sale of its Washington headquarters after the value of the office building plummeted.

The MBA bought the building for $79 million, using $75 million in borrowed money. It sold the building for $41 million.

Someone took a haircut. The Mortgage Bankers won’t say who.

And I’ve got to say that those complaints are soooooo unattractive.

What the law does is require banks to maintain at least a 5% interest in the mortgages, credit card debt and auto loans they bundle and sell to investors.

The idea is that they’ll vet borrowers more closely if they can’t pass all of the risk along to someone else.

Some loans Congress considers safe, such as traditional 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with at least a 20% down payment, are even exempted from the 5% requirement.

So what we’re really talking about is trying to make the banks act more responsibly when they agree to more risky loans such as interest-only or adjustable rate mortgages.

In my view, this is the absolute least we can ask of the banking industry.

These are exactly the kind of loans that nearly wrecked the financial industry two years and pushed the economy to the brink of another Great Depression.

If I had my way, we’d ban the securitization of consumer debt and require the banks the keep all of the loans they make.

That’s the way the financial industry worked before banks began packaging consumer debt to sell to investors in the late ’80s, and the system worked very well.

Bankers embraced selling the loans they made because they were always grousing about the risk involved in making long-term loans (primarily mortgages) with money from short-term deposits (think savings accounts and CDs.)

There was some truth to that.

When interest rates went up the spread between what banks had to pay for deposits and what they were collecting from the mortgages they held, did narrow and reduced their profit.

What bankers never seemed to mention was the nice boost they got when rates went down and that spread increased.

Everyone took for granted the stable and ethical banking industry this system created.

The 5% rule is not a modest effort to rein in irresponsible lending. It’s a minor effort to rein in irresponsible lending.

It’s time for the banks to stop bitching and moaning about every new rule or regulation that tries to restore public faith and confidence in their industry.

But what about the mortgage deduction?

The ability to deduct the interest you pay on your home loan has long been portrayed as one of the two, great middle-class tax breaks. (The other is tax-deferred retirement accounts.)

But why should Washington subsidize the cost of buying and owning a home?

When you take a closer look at this deduction you find that it’s just as unfair as most tax breaks, with most of the benefits not really helping the middle class at all.

Here’s why we should ditch it:

It’s blatantly unfair to anyone who rents. Renting makes sound financial sense for many people, and more than three out of every 10 households do so. (The home ownership rate was 67.4% last year.)

Homeowners who take the standard deduction can’t use it. That’s covers another one-in-three households. So the deduction has no relevance to well over half of all households.

As with most tax breaks, the wealthy benefit most. A study I saw recently said the mortgage deduction saves 19 million families with incomes between $40,000 and $75,000 about $10 billion a year. But it saves 2.8 million families with incomes of more than $250,000 about $15 billion.

It’s really just another example of corporate welfare. When Washington reduces the cost of homeownership, who really benefits? The housing and banking industries that take advantage of it to sell more and bigger homes with larger mortgages.

Anyone in Washington who made a serious effort to eliminate, or even scale back, the mortgage deduction would meet with furious opposition from everyone associate with the building, selling and financing of homes.

Of course they’d claim they were only trying to protect the home-buying public.

But we shouldn’t buy that after the way these bubble-creating, reckless-lending, heartlessly-foreclosing industries have acted over the past couple of years.

They are in it for themselves and when you get right down to it, they are the biggest beneficiaries of government subsidized home ownership.

And that is why it should be repealed.

We recently received an email from Citimortgage, urging us to enroll in its “BiWeekly Advantage Plan.”

After you sign up, the plan automatically withdraws half of your regular monthly mortgage payment every 14 days for a total of 26 drafts a year.

It’s the equivalent of making 13 monthly mortgage payments a year, instead of 12.

Now paying your mortgage off more quickly is usually a good thing that will literally save tens of thousands of dollars in interest costs.

But — and you knew there had to be a but — signing up for bi-weekly payments through Citimortgage is a costly proposition.

It costs $375 to enroll, plus a $1.50 transaction fee with each draft – or another $39 a year.

We can’t imagine why anyone would want to do that when you can simply add as much extra money as you’d like to your regular monthly check.

Any amount above the required minimum payment will be automatically applied to your balance at absolutely no cost to you.

In fact, here are three free ways to pay your mortgage faster.

Charging fees to pay your mortgage is just another stupid bank trick.

The average cost of a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 4.96%, and the average rate for a 15-year, fixed-rate loan dropped to 4.34% in Bankrate’s most recent survey of major lenders.

Those are the cheapest they’ve ever been since the survey began in 1985.

As a result, you can find lenders such as AimLoan.com offering 30-year fixed-rate mortgages for as little as 4.625%, and 15-year loans for 4.00%, with no points.

Home loans were expected to become more costly this spring after the Federal Reserve ended its campaign to flood the mortgage market with money.

But worries that several European nations might default on their loans have created a new financial crisis and sent investors fleeing for the safety of Treasury bills or other debt guaranteed by the U.S. government.

That includes mortgages, since 96% of all new home loans are now backed in some way by an agency of the federal government.

The surge in demand has actually pushed interest rates down since the Fed bought the last of the $1.25 trillion worth of home loans it now holds in late March.

Principal and interest payments would be just $514 a month for each $100,000 borrowed with AimLoan’s 30-year mortgage, and $740 a month with its 15-year mortgage.

With rates that low, you may be able to afford the payments needed to pay off your home in half the time.

Use this mortgage comparison calculator to see how much interest you could save by paying your home off more quickly.

The online lender based in San Diego, Calif., is licensed to write mortgages in 45 states (the exceptions are New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Kansas, or Pennsylvania).

 To qualify you’ll need a credit score of 700 or higher. You must also be applying for a conforming loan — one for less than $417,000 to $729,500, depending on where you live.

But the Fed dropped out of the market March 31, and so far, mortgage rates remained near historic lows.

Our latest survey of the best rates available in 10 major cities found lenders offering 30-year, fixed-rate loans for less than 5% in all but one.

That’s unchanged from March, and nearly as good as last November, when average mortgage rates reached all-time lows and the best rate was below 5% in every city.

To find the best available rate in each market we search the databases at Bankrate.com and Interest.com.

We compare 30-year, fixed-rate loans with no points and fees of less than $2,000 because that’s the best mortgage for most borrowers.

The best deals we found were:

Atlanta: 4.875% from Absolute Mortgage Company.

Boston: 4.875% from Total Mortgage Services.

Chicago: 5.0% from Sterling Home Mortgage.

Dallas: 4.875% from Gold Star Inc. Mortgage Financial Group.

Los Angeles: 5.00% from AimLoan.com.

Miami: 4.75% from EZZ Financial.

New York: 4.875% from EverBank.

Phoenix: 4.875% from NationsChoice Mortgage.

San Francisco: 4.875% from The Money Store.

Seattle: 4.875% from Pacific finance Group, LLC.

The fine print: These mortgage rates are for conforming loans (less than $417,000), and for borrowers with credit scores of at least 700. For scores from 680 to 699, you’ll usually pay higher fees, up to 1% of the loan value, or a higher rate.

Take out a new loan — purchase or refinance — and get back 1% of each year’s total mortgage payments.

But how much will you have to pay for a Chase loan?

When we used the “custom quote” feature on the bank’s Web site, we could find some fairly competitive rates on 30-year, fixed-rate loans.

Unfortunately, every quote also came with points — that’s prepaid interest due at closing, with one point equaling 1% of the loan amount.

Let’s look at one quote we were given for a $200,000 loan — 5.125% with 1.5 points.

The monthly payment would be $1,090, the annual payment would total $13,080, and the 1% cash back would be $130.80.

At that rate it would take just over 23 years to recoup the $3,000 in points the bank charged at closing. And almost no one keeps a mortgage 23 years.

The average loan is paid off in seven years, when the borrower either refinances or sells. In that case, homeowners would only recapture $917, or less than a third, of what they paid in points.

Bottom line: If you can find a lender offering the same rate without points, that’s a better deal than a “cash back” mortgage from Chase with points.

A lender offering a lower rate without points is an ever better way to go.

We had no problem finding lenders who did both in the databases at Bankrate.com and Interest.com.

One final concern.

To qualify for a “cash back” mortgage, you also have to have (or open) a Chase checking account.

That means you’ll be subjected to Chase’s high-pressure marketing campaign to sign up for over-draft protection and all of the fees that come with it.

That’s quite an improvement from July when only one of the 10 cities we looked at had those loans available for less than 5%.

It’s nearly as good as what we found in November, when average mortgage rates plunged to new record lows and loans were available for less than 5% in every single city we surveyed.

To find the best rates in each city we search the databases at Bankrate.com and Interest.com.

We compare 30-year, fixed-rate loans with no points and fees of less than $2,000 because that’s the best mortgage for most borrowers.

The best deals we found were:

Atlanta: 4.875% from AimLoan.com.

Boston: 4.875% from Gold Star Inc.

Chicago: 4.875% from Sterling Home Mortgage.

Dallas: 4.875% from Austin First Mortgage.

Los Angeles: 5.00% from Integrity First Financial Group.

Miami: 4.75% from Quick Quote Mortgage.

New York: 4.875% from EverBank.

Phoenix: 4.875% from Interstate Mortgage Service, Inc.

San Francisco: 4.875% from Mortgage Capital Associates.

Seattle: 4.875% from American Interbank.com.

The fine print: These mortgage rates are for conforming loans (less than $417,000), and for borrowers with credit scores of at least 700. For scores from 680 to 699, you’ll usually pay higher fees, up to 1% of the loan value, or a higher rate.

Short sales are different.

Lenders must approve any deal that allows a home to be sold for less than what’s owed on the mortgage, and it can take weeks, sometimes months, for them to evaluate and approve (or reject) each offer.

That makes it tough to do a lot of dickering.

So your first bid needs to be a realistic offer with a good chance it will be accepted.

Start by estimating the fair market value of the home using comps (values of similar properties that have sold near the home in the past few months).

Take the condition of the home into account and reduce your estimate if the home needs repairs.

Calculate 82% of the home’s value, throw in a few thousand dollars to cover the lender’s cost of doing a short sale (ask your agent what that typically is for your area), and you have a good starting point.

Now look at the quality of your comps.

If most of the homes weren’t foreclosures and spent several months on the market, you’ve probably got a good bid.

If most of the homes were foreclosures and only spent a few weeks on the market, you’ll have to offer more — possibly up to full market value.