OK, Wifey and I are looking at refinancing our house from a 30 year to a 15 year. I put my info into lowermybills.com and got a bunch of responses back.

Basically, we've been in our house for 1 1/2 years with a 30 year Fixed Mortgage for 6.0% I saw that I can get a 15 year APR for less than 5.5%, which would only up our payment a hundred bucks a month, something that would save me about 90k in interest.

I got the same rate as my bank, only they require a grand in "fees", where some guy that called me wont charge for it.

Any suggestions, thoughts? Anyone here do this crap?

 

I'm a broker and let me give you 1 piece of advice...don't do anything online..if they submit your loan to get you pre-approved it goes to about 8 diff places and your credit gets pulled between 8-16 times as for fees & rates....just look at the bottom line: what's you payment. Going from a 30-15 w/ a $100 increase is a good move btw

 

I have refinanced through E*Trade mortgage 4 times in the last 5 years. Never had a single problem. Always have used the no fee/no cost option. Down to a 15 year @ 5.375% now. Got a Home Equity Loan through them also. Piece of cake system. Check em out.

https://lending.etrade.com/e/t/mortgage/lhome

 

I used these guys, got a good rate and they were very professional to deal with.

http://www.hamiltonnational.com/

 

lowermybills.com does not give out enough info to pull credit. At least they didn't when I worked for Full Spectrum Lending. All we got was contact info to call up the potential customer.

When we did refis the only upfront out of pocket cost for the homeowner was the appraisal fee. Typically this was put on a credit card anyways and the loan amount was adjusted accordingly. So really there wasn't any out of pocket cost to the homeowner.

 

thunderchicken -

the best thing (in my opinion) is to refinance with the best rate you can but with zero closing costs.... as in zero... ... a lot of times people will have the $2k of closing costs put back into the loan and refinance with zero cash out of pocket... but that is sometimes dumb....

A typical refinance would require new title insurance, recording the deed, maybe an appraisal, etc...... on a $200k house that would be $2000 or so....... it would take you 2+ years over savings just to get back the extra $2k you dumped into the refinance.

Our company instead offers a slightly higher rate (like .25%) and will then get "back points" or "yeild spread" to cover your closing costs.... so in the end on a $200k house you have zero closing costs and your monthly payment may be $20.00 higher per month..... but if you move anytime soon you will not have that extra principal our $ out of pocket.

Our company is only good in PA, but I assume other lenders can pay your closing costs for you with a similar program.

goodluck.

 

I've have clients with $4k in cc and they have recouped them in 3 months....it's ALWAYS going to be case by case. Clients are people and every one of them are different. Anyway, this has been discussed at great lengths on this site alone so good luck. Just please don't don't make blanket statements about issues that are not your in your genre of daily dealings.

-tim

 

Yea, the guy I talked to had the lowest rate with about $500 in costs. He said he can roll that stuff into the loan.

My bank has a higher rate (my current mortgage), but this guy is going to send over a good faith estimate this afternoon.

Hopefully it will all work out.

 

You can see that i say "sometimes" that is dumb.... that is not a "blanket statement!! Don't put words in my mouth.


and.....How the hell would someone recoup $1300 a month ($4k/3 months) in "savings"?

That would have to be one hell of a Mortgage and one hell of a difference in interest rates.........you would need a $1M mortgage to change by 1.5% to create a $1315 savings per month..... at which point I would wonder how a $1M mortgage only has $4k in closing costs????

 

Refinancing is not always is simple as changing someone's rate. Most often there are many other variables involved, paying off bills, freeing up cash flow, cash out for other property. As for recouping closing cost that quickly it's simple, if I save someone $1-2000 per month by paying off debt or by putting them into a Pay Opt Arm their savings is typically substantial. And I did not to put words in your mouth, so don't take too much offense to that . Let me ask you something, what do you do for a living?