Refinancing doesn’t save you money unless you calculate in the interest that you’ve already paid. Especially when you think you’ll own the house for the long haul or forever. If you pay $2,500 a month in principal and interest, you are going to pay $900,000 over the life of a 30-year mortgage. If you are 4 years into the loan and are going to refinance to a principal and interest payment of $2,800 you are going to save $200 a month, correct? Wrong! Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: closing costs, refi, refinance, refinancing, when to refinance
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The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) is a mortgage assistance program, set up by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in March 2009 to help underwater and near-underwater homeowners refinance their mortgages.
After the housing market crash in 2009 many homeowners were faced with a situation where their house was considered “underwater”. In this scenario, the house value was less than the mortgage loan cost, in other words, having a negative equity value in the home. Refinancing was not an option, nor was selling the home unless they paid the lender for the difference. Unfortunately, this lead many homeowners into foreclosure. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HARP, Loan, Loan Lookup, refinance, underwater mortgage
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In a word, no. This is not possible. I wrote a blog back in 2011 in another feverish refinance market showing the numbers on how you can’t shorten the term of your loan from 30 to 15 years without increasing your monthly mortgage payment. Those numbers bear repeating in the current interest rate climate and are below. Check out this hypothetical example: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Recapture Period, refinance, Refinance boom, when to refinance
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Actually, the refinance boom is indeed over; however, there are a fair amount of people that still need to refinance. For example, I know of many people who have decided to move sooner than they imagined. I hear of consumers who thought that they would live in their homes for the long haul, but then due to circumstances that were a surprise to them, they have now decided to leave in the next few years. Let me give Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ARM, ARM loans, Fixed rate, interest rates, refinance, Refinance boom
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Actually, the refinance boom is indeed over; however, there are a fair amount of people that still need to refinance. For example, I know of many people who have excellent interest rates on a 15-Year fixed rate mortgage because they thought they would be in their home forever and wanted to get the mortgage paid off over a shorter term, but now have suffered a job setback or some other sort of financial blow, and need to revert to a 30-Year mortgage to reduce the monthly payment. Let me give Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 15-year fixed, 30-year fixed, refinance
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Actually, the refinance boom is indeed over; however, there are a fair amount of people that still need to refinance. For example, I know of many people who have excellent interest rates on their 30-Year fixed rate mortgages, and plan to be in their home for a long time or possibly forever. These people should consider giving up their low 30-Year fixed rate, and get a still quite low 15-Year fixed rate, and save a small fortune over time. Let me give Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: 15-year fixed, 30-year fixed, interest rates, refinance, Refinance boom
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Actually, the refinance boom is indeed over; however, there are a fair amount of people that still need to refinance. There are a stunning amount of home equity lines (HELOCs) outstanding and most people will need to refinance those. Most HELOCs were set up so that the first ten years of the loan only require interest only payments and no principal is due. Then, in year 11, the principal would start to amortize, and it amortizes over 20 years, not 30. This is a problem because Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: HELOC, interest rate, refinance
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Actually, the refinance boom is over; however, there are a fair amount of people that still need to refinance. The problem is that the people that have not refinanced when rates were low simply don’t realize that they should still refinance. The people that obviously needed to refinance have already refinanced, in some cases multiple times. There are many people left that can refinance. For example, Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: ARM, ARM loans, Fixed rate, interest rate, refinance, Refinance boom
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There is always another bus, right? So why not wait for the next one? I am not sure I agree. The next bus may be broken down, or out of gas, or delayed beyond a comfortable waiting period. But I am not talking about a bus, I am talking about a refinance. I hear rates are going down 1% a week, and soon banks will be giving away money for free. Do not refinance now because mortgages will be free soon if you wait. And if you wait long enough, banks will even pay you to take a mortgage. Is this true? Come on! You know my sense of sarcasm. No, it is not true. But Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: interest rates, mortgage, refinance, refinancing
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Rates are still very, very low by any measure, even though they have gone up some in the past few months. Although we went through a refinance boom in 2010, there are still plenty of people who want to refinance. Many of them still can, and some cannot. Why can’t they? Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: refinance
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