Refinancing your mortgage can be one of the best financial decisions you make depending on how frequently you do this, the purpose of your refinance and the refinance product you decide to go with. You’ll need to put your trust in another individual (usually your loan officer that works with a brokerage or a loan specialist with a bank) that will help you with the process of getting refinanced. Because you’ll need to trust someone that will act in your best interest, the following are a few tips so that you’ll be a little educated on the basic refinance process and a few “gotchas” about the mortgage industry.
The first tip is to get pre-approved with multiple lenders. What this will do is allow the price comparison to be more vast and give you more options. If nothing else, this will give you the opportunity to have multiple rates and products to compare. Working with a good loan officer will also enable you to access multiple lenders as most loan officers or mortgage brokerages have relationships with multiple lenders.
Most lenders will have a prepayment penalty. This second tip is to make sure you know what the prepayment penalty is on your current loan before you spend the time shopping for a new lender. If you have a large prepayment, it may offset any benefit from the refinance. You may still end up with a lower rate, but knowing if you have a prepayment penalty and what it is should be a priority. Most lenders typically have a 120 to 180 day prepayment penalty. This insures that even if you refinance after only 120 days, they’ll still have had an opportunity to cover their costs and make some profit while they’ve held onto the loan. Some lenders do have a 90 day prepayment policy. This information is great to know also both from your existing provider as well as the lender you’re about to sign with so that you know when you can next refinance in the event that rates are good or there is another cause for refinancing.
The third tip is to evaluate your monthly cash flow and how it can be affected by a refinance to reduce rates vs. to have a no-cost refinance. Most homebuyers will most likely not hold onto the same loan for the duration of the mortgage. What this means is that whether the borrower refinances within 6 months to 2 years down the road or sells the home, or otherwise changes lenders, the purchase “down” or buy down of the interest rate has cost more than you would have saved by buying down the rate. This isn’t to say that it is never worth buying down the rate, but with your loan officer, do the calculations so that you understand how long it would take in monthly savings to justify the cost of buying down the rate. Your loan officer should be able to help you make this calculation and help develop a loan product that will work for your specific scenario.
Also, if you are in only a temporary situation or know that you will only be in your home for a shorter amount of time, instead of buying down the rate, your best option may be to lower your monthly costs as much as possible instead of coming up with more cash at closing. It may be that if the cost to buy down the rate is $2,000 which may save you $20,000 over the 30 years you’ll have this mortgage, of course it’s worth it. But you may also need to decide on the value of that same $2,000 if invested in another medium. For instance, how much would that same $2,000 be worth if invested in something like t-bonds or another sort of mutual fund, etc. Often, the interest rate on a mortgage is low enough that buying down the rate to get slightly lower may not be worth it. Run the numbers with a competent loan officer and you’ll have a good idea of what may best help you.
The fourth tip is to reserve the credit check for the loan officer and broker you decide to go with. This shouldn’t matter too much as the credit bureaus made some changes with how multiple inquiries within the same period of time affects overall credit score. The answer is that the credit adjusts as if it were only one inquiry. Also, to keep an eye on your own credit, you have the option to get a free credit report from each agency once per year. What this means is that if you request your credit report every 4 months, you’ll have a good chance of seeing not only what is on it, but your score as well. The three agencies are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.
Loan officers and mortgage brokers get paid one of two ways, either up front by charging you directly (like in the case of loan origination fees) or in the case of a “back-end” payout from the lender also known as yield spread premium. This is a compensation from the lender to the loan officer for selling the loan at a higher rate than the “par” rate. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it does allow for a no-cost refinance. What makes it bad is the fact that it is usually unknown to the borrowers. If they don’t ask about it or know about it, there is a possibility that the loan officer is offering a rate above what the industry would consider fair compensation for the work that is done. Asking your loan officer what the par rate is and how they are being compensated is a fair question. Although you won’t necessarily know the actual par rate, expect that a refinance may earn the loan officer somewhere around $800 to $2000 depending on the loan amount. For this industry, those may be just fine. If your loan officer won’t answer that question directly, you may look for a second opinion.
These tips will save you money when you use them to refinance. The more basic education you have related to mortgages, the more informed you’ll be and the better you will be at spotting “red flags” when it comes to refinancing your mortgage. You may also ask around for friends, neighbors and coworkers who have recently purchased a home or possibly refinanced and find out about their experience. Often a recommendation from a friend for a trusted loan officer can make the difference between a good and bad experience at refinancing.
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Tags: finances, home loans, Loans, Mortgage, refinance, save money