mortgage advice, MO Missourimortgage advice - MO Missouri: mortgages, loans of any type, refinancing, quick easy online quotes, home equity loans, See if you could save on your mortgage today. Q. Should I try to pay as many discount points as possible to lower my loans interest rate? A. If you plan on staying in the property for at least a few years, paying discount points to lower the loans interest rate can be a good way to lower your required monthly loan payment (and possibly increase the loan amount that you can afford to borrow). If you only plan to stay in the property for a year or two, your monthly savings may not be enough to recoup the cost of the discount points that you paid up-front. Ask your lender how long it would take for your monthly savings to recoup the costs of the discount points. Try the Refinance rate shopping center at LoanWeb.com up to 50% Savings! Repayment Mortgages Becoming more popular, this type of mortgage gives you the certainty that at the end of your mortgage term all of the mortgage debt will be repaid. This is because each monthly payment consists of the full amount of interest due plus a proportionate amount of the capital debt. Considering that todays rates are at historic 40 year lows, consumers looking for a good deal on a rate should apply for rate quotes at lending marketplaces now. Have lenders compete for your business and negotiate your best rate with such rate lock programs as Float-downs, or Rate Re-lock-ins or Long Term Rate Locks that allow for locks as long as 60 days or more. Where to Shop: Your first stop should definitely be a mortgage banker such as Countrywide Funding. Unlike mortgage brokers, with which these outfits are sometimes confused, mortgage bankers are not intermediaries between you and a lender; they are lenders. Mortgage bankers dont write a lot of adjustable-rate loans, because its harder to package those for sale to organizations, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Thus, because mortgage bankers make their money on fixed rates, their prices tend to be the most aggressive around. With interest rates still at relatively low levels, many lenders will encourage you to take out a home-equity line of credit on your primary residence to fund all or part of your second-home purchase. Watch your step here. Most home-equity lines of credit float a point or two higher than the prime rate, so you could end up repaying this piece at a much higher interest rate than if you had simply taken a mortgage for the entire amount. Plus, unlike mortgage interest, which is deductible on up to $1 million of debt on your first and second homes combined, the home-equity cap is $100,000. (You get a break on $1.1 million total.) Some ARMs offer a conversion feature that allows you to convert to a fixed rate loan at certain times during your loan. Heres how it works. Under the 80-10-10 plan, the 10 percent down payment on a $100,000 house is $10,000. The first mortgage is $80,000 at 7.50 percent, which comes to a monthly payment of $559. The second mortgage for $10,000 has a 9.50 percent interest rate, making a monthly payment of $84. Total monthly payments of the two loans: $643. |