Q: We just refinanced our condo, receiving part of our equity in cash. Is the money we received taxable?

Sheila D.

Milpitas

A: No. When you refinance your mortgage and take out all or part of your home equity in cash, you do not owe tax on that cash. It is tax-free for you to spend as you wish.

There is a good reason. Borrowed money must eventually be repaid, whether you repay it over the life of the mortgage, such as 20 or 30 years, or when you sell the condo and pay off mortgage balance in full.

When home builders behave badly, some of their customers may have an unexpected resource: The federal government’s statute police, who have become increasingly active in resolving consumers’ complaints through nonpublic interventions with builders.The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act is a consumer protection statute that targets kickbacks and other settlement-related abuses. The statute police are investigators at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They are best known for their splashy public settlement agreements with realty, title insurance and mortgage industry firms, sometimes involving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 Not all the waves in Hawaii are offshore; some are sweeping through the residential real estate market.

“We have had some serious celebrity buying and selling activity over here,” said David Robins of locally owned Prudential Locations in Honolulu. The cast and crew of “Lost,” the hit ABC show now in its third season of filming on Oahu, have contributed to the frenzy. The latest to join the landed is Daniel Dae Kim, who plays Jin-Soo Kwon and was voted one of the sexiest men last year by People magazine.

 Credit counselors are finding that mortgage debt is playing a bigger role in the deteriorating financial health of consumers contemplating bankruptcy.

In a survey released last month by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, a nonprofit group representing 115 counseling organizations, the average person receiving financial advice before filing for bankruptcy in the last year earned $27,000 annually and had $38,500 of unsecured debt spread over eight credit cards.

During the first six months of that 12-month survey period, consumers receiving counseling had, on average, $2,000 more in unsecured debts but nearly $4,500 more in annual income.