Refinance questions

[bozo_casanova]

I've never done this before, but it;s a good time for me to refinance:

My credit is nails, and I don't want to pay any points or put any cash down, and I want to roll the closing costs into the note.

What kind of rate could I get?
How quick could I close?

 

[BrûléeOrange]

I merely checked with my mortgage company on what my current pay off amount is several weeks ago and they've been all over me in writing (promise of Accelerated Approval etc.) and on the phone to keep my business.

They are offereing a good faith estimate (I have it in writing) 5.5% 0/0 with all closing costs rolled in the loan (plus they are exempting some of the usual costs since it's an existing loan with them already).

I will lower my payment about $200 a month (which means about 2 years to make up for the refinancing costs). Probably going to do it as I've checked with tons of other mortgages company and nobody will touch that rate. I currently have a 6.5% rate on the loan.

I just read that it is the perfect time to re-finance your home loan as long as you meet two criteria: 1 - Excellent credit rating & 2 - The loan amount is less than $417,000 (don't ask me why on that one).

PS: Mine is a 30 year fixed rate.

 

[jimmyjazz]

Conforming loans have been limited to < $417K for a while now. I thought I heard that they were going to bump that limit to over $700K, at least for the rest of this calendar year? If so, you should see better interest rates for a lot of loans that used to be "jumbo". (Unfortunately, interest rates don't seem to be dropping the way people expected them to drop.)

 

[DCLonghorn8]

Jimmy: they uped the conforming loan limits in certain metropolitan areas and each area has it's own limit. The max is $729K. It is until the end of the year, but the guess is that Congress will eventually make it permanent like in California (which already had this in place in certain markets).

But the rub around here is that everyone is adding on fees to do it or is not offering lower rates for the new jumbos. My bank is charging 3 points for the new "jumbo conforming" loans and the rates are a bit higher than traditional conforming (not as high as they were before this passed.)

We'll see how it shakes out, but it looks to me like Congress/Administration wants bigger limits, but the industry isn't quite comfortable with it yet even though Fannie will back bigger loans now.

 

[Wulaw Horn]

BC- how long have you been in the house and how long do you intend to stay there?

I'm just asking b/c when you say you don't want to pay any points, bring any cash and want to roll the closing costs in that's the typical deal that I see, but I don't know that it's necessarily the best.

I have a couple brokers that will pay all your closing costs- not cause you to bring a dime of money to the cloisng (in other words your new loan won't be a cent over the payoff amount of your previous loan) and end up charging a marginally higher interest rate (like somewhere around a quarter of a point- based upon loan size).

This is a pretty good deal- imo- b/c the break even point is usually something like 6 or 7 years compared to what you stated you want, and the average person is in their mortgage something like 4 or 5 years.

Also, if you go from a 30 to a 15 a lot of times, with the 15 year deal being a half point lower than a 30 you can really accelerate your paying off of the house and build equity a hell of a lot quicker.

we aren't there today, but if you time it right you should be able to get a 15 year for about 4.875 or 4.75 and a 30 for 5.375 or 5.5%

The best deal on closings come when you can close within 12 days (the brokers get better pricing so they can work you a better deal).

If you seriously want some help with this and don't have a guy you love PM me- I have a couple guys that are really honest straight shooters that I would trust implicitly to do the right thing and explain the process (much more so then some of the yahoos at the big shops like a countrywide or a wamu). At a minimum I can give you a reality check (if you have your own guy) as to whether or not your terms are competitive with the market.