Aven and recreational vehicle manufacturer Forest River have launched a co-branded home equity line of credit that puts HELOC financing directly into participating RV and marine dealerships, giving qualified homeowners another way to finance a major purchase without first approaching a traditional mortgage lender.
The Forest River Homeline Card combines a HELOC with a credit card and offers lines of credit of up to $400,000. Aven and Forest River describe it as the industry’s first co-branded HELOC.
Aven says qualified customers can receive a prequalification offer in as little as three minutes and access a HELOC in as little as three days. Once established, the line can be accessed through an Aven credit card.
That effectively moves the home equity conversation to the point where a consumer is making a large purchase — in this case, an RV dealership.
Forest River cited data from the RV Industry Association indicating that more than 80% of RV owners are homeowners, creating a potentially sizable pool of customers with home equity available to tap. The RVIA separately reports that 8.1 million U.S. households own an RV.
The financing market itself is substantial. Financial institutions participating in the RVIA’s latest lender survey funded more than 220,000 retail indirect RV loans totaling more than $10.4 billion in 2025. The average amount financed was $61,261 for a new RV and $59,266 for a used one.
Home Equity Finds Another Distribution Channel
The Forest River arrangement comes as mortgage lenders and technology companies are putting more resources behind home equity lending.
Homeowners have increasingly turned to HELOCs and second mortgages as a way to access equity without replacing low-rate first mortgages. Home equity loans accounted for 17.52% of U.S. mortgage transactions in 2025, based on an analysis by real estate data provider Benutech. Home equity loan volume increased 15% between 2021 and 2025 even as overall mortgage activity declined sharply.
Mortgage technology companies have also been working to make those loans faster and easier to originate.
FirstClose recently introduced a lender portal designed to help LOs manage home equity prospects from initial contact through application, including preliminary eligibility screening.
Figure, meanwhile, said mortgage partners using its platform generated approximately 2.6 times the HELOC volume predicted by their production before joining the platform. More recently, Figure said an AI agent working alongside originators increased funded-loan conversion by 143% compared with originators working without the agent.
The Forest River partnership approaches the opportunity from another direction: bringing the HELOC to consumers through a non-mortgage brand at the moment a financing need arises.
And Aven says RV dealerships are only the beginning.
The partnership is Aven’s first co-branded financial relationship, and the company said it plans to expand the model to other consumer brands and distribution networks.
“Many Forest River customers are homeowners making a significant purchase, so home equity financing is a natural fit,” Aven Head of Strategic Partnerships Alexandra Atlas said. “We see this as a model we can expand to other consumer brands and distribution networks.”
A Different Kind Of Competition For LOs
For originators, that expansion could add another dimension to the growing competition for home equity borrowers.
Lenders have traditionally looked to their existing mortgage customers as natural prospects for HELOCs and second liens. Embedded products like Forest River’s create another path to those same homeowners, potentially reaching them when they are shopping for an RV, home improvement, or another large purchase rather than when they are actively seeking a mortgage product.
That competition is developing even as HELOC borrowing costs have risen. The Fed’s Sept. 16 rate increase pushed the prime rate from 6.75% to 7%, raising the benchmark used to price many variable-rate HELOCs.
At the same time, first-mortgage rates near 7% continue to give homeowners carrying substantially lower existing rates an incentive to preserve those mortgages when they need to access equity.
Aven already offers its own Home Equity Visa Card, which combines a revolving home equity line with card access. The Forest River agreement extends that model into a branded retail relationship.
Aven is a financial technology company rather than a bank. Banking services are provided by Coastal Community Bank, Member FDIC, which also issues Aven Visa credit cards.
“The technology is what makes this model possible,” Aven co-founder and CEO Sadi Khan said. “We automate the work behind financial services, from income verification to HELOC origination and funding.”
For mortgage lenders and originators building their own home equity strategies, Forest River’s move introduces a different competitive question: not simply who can originate a HELOC faster, but where the homeowner encounters the product in the first place.
