With the housing market set to potentially crash, anybody thinking about refinancing? I'm trying to convince my wife we NEED TO. We're sitting at 5.35% and we're 2.5 years into a 30 year mortgage. With a little bit more down, I think we could get our price down to within $150-200 of what we owe now for a 15 year. I think it's something I need to jump on. Anyone else on this train, and if so, what kind of rate are you finding?
Already did it. Go through Costco. They'll eat most of the costs through their vendors. We settled on NBKC bank. We were 2 years into a 30 year mortgage, but we'd been paying extra and had 26 left. Cut our interest rate from 4.25 to 3.25 for a 20 year loan. Payment is basically exactly the same as the base of the 30 year. So at the minimum I cut 6 years and close to $100k off the interest for about $3k in costs (texas title is annoying.) If I keep paying the same extra (so payment would be same as what I was paying before) I'll pay it off closer to 10 years. That had no points either. Rates have actually gone up a little I think though. Honestly a no brainer.
At 5% yes you should do all you can to get it down, it's hard to talk about rate because it's dependent on credit and various other factors, but you should definitely aim for something in the 3% range if possible, maybe even the 2% range on a 15 year.
Interesting, I didn't know Costco offered this, thanks so much for the heads up! Haha, sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread!
Thanks @justtxyank . Didn't know Costco did this. Will pass it along to my brother in law. Ever since finding out about Costco and rental cars, that's where I book it every time.
Me either! A buddy tipped me off to it! They aren't the lender, they just lock the lender fees for you with vendors who contract with them. I have the executive membership so the lender couldn't charge me more than $175! My only costs were the Title Fee for Texas and the pre-payment items that you have to do. Quicken wanted like $9k!
Yes - refi for sure, either lower points and 15 year or lower points 30 year and apply extra money saved to principal (just tell them extra payments etc. That you want it to principal etc, some do this automatically but not always). You'll save substantially, especially since you're only 2.5 in and basically just paying interest right now. So advice above is awesome!
First piece of advice: Stay away from Quicken. Far far away. It took me one 45 minute hellish call to understand what a disaster the company is. My friend just went through a refi process with them (after telling him to stay away). It took two months and the final week, they told him they couldn't proceed with the loan due to certain technicalities on his rental house. Yes, you absolutely should. I purchased a home in Nov 2018 with 5.125%. I refi'ed in Nov 2019 with a 3.35%. I did buy some points. Second piece of advice: SHOP! Understand your Loan Estimate, especially the Section A. Origination Charges. Only concern yourself with the overall total of this category. I used Better.com and LoanDepot.com. The both allowed me to get a rate quote (loan estimate) w/out pulling credit or submitting paperwork. Their quote will not be bullshit if you have great credit and qualifying income. They also both allowed me to lock on a rate and a price match guarantee if i found a better offer during the closing process. My rep with LoanDepot was great so I locked with him. Better.com has a good portal that allowed me to pull daily Loan Estimates w/out having to go through a live person. After a couple weeks, I found a really good Loan Estimate on the Better.com web portal, downloaded it and submitted it to LoanDepot. I went from a 3.75% with about $3000 in points to 3.375% with $2000 in points. LoanDepot also has a nice Loan Rate Guarantee. It has its T&C's of course (like you must wait at least one year)
Thank you. Great advice. Thanks to everyone. To be honest, this could be the difference in comfortably paying my house off by time I'm in my late 40's versus paying my house off in my early to mid 60's. Gotta take advantage, as stressful as it is. That's a huge life changer.
Was able to lock in 3.25% today on a 30 year loan without purchasing any points. Only 1.5 years into my loan and was originally at 4.625%.
Costco apparently does everything. Ive been going through Costco for their credit card merchant services for a few years now. Theyve saved me a ton and theres no BS fine print of charging you monthly for equipment youve already bought and paid off. Any small business needs to look into them for their merchant service.
I’m likely going to do it. You get 2 months of no payments, which in the chance you do get laid off could seriously help, and in a few weeks the rates will be stupid cheap. I’m already locked into a great rate for a 15 so I’m just waiting until they get lower than what I’m on.
Just expanding on what has been said in this thread, can't go wrong with Costco vs. Quicken Loans. QL used to be affordable on a refi, but I try with them a month ago, and they wanted something like $10K on my refi. I told them thanks but no thanks. I called Costco and got a great deal. $175 cost to refi. The largest expenses are $1300 for title insurance and $445 for appraisal. Other than the appraisal, ask your broker to roll everything into the mortgage so that you wont have to bring anything for the closing. My rate is 2.99%, 15-years, apr of 3.00%. Closing is supposed to be in 5 weeks, so fingers crossed that the world won't end before that time. Well, if it does, it won't matter anyway. lol
You think it's better to wait a couple weeks for better rates? Essentially, should I move fast or ease into it for a couple weeks?
I'm definitely going to start looking into this again. I currently have a 3.95% rate over 30 years. I'm 5 years in now, so if I can get a 15 year loan to pay it off sooner, that would be really really ideal.
@justtxyank @Space Ghost and anyone else- care to post your costs sheets? I’m curious. I’m working with my lender that I use for my rent houses and he wants to charge me close to $9k in costs which will be rolled into the loan to save $200/mo at 3.5%. Granted, my entire real estate business model is to maximize monthly income but this cuts into my home equity $9k.
I haven’t done much research but I heard in 2008 it took a couple of weeks for mortgage rates to drop after they cut interest rates.
