Anyone refinance lately?

[jandmmom]

Not sure if this is the place to ask this, but....have any of you refinanced a mortgage lately?

I am considering it, since the rates are so low. The biggest issue is the home appraisal, since accurate comps are really hard to come by for my home (we have an older home on a good amount of land, totally unique & highly upgraded). I am afraid that it will appraise low if comps are the basis for the appraisal & then we would lose the $400 we would have to put out.

Anyways, if you have gone through the process...what steps did you take? How did you choose a lender?

Thanks!

 

[mrudman]

We refinanced last year, and it all worked out ok in the end. Stayed with the same bank we were originally financed through... we own an older home (1930) on 2 1/2 acres (a lot of acreage for our city), and since our original finance we had put a 30k addition onto it. The appraisal still came in a bit lower than I had hoped, but this was right when home values were at the lowest also.

Our loan amount was exactly 80% of our appraisal, so we didn't have to worry about PMI, which was our goal.

When the appraiser came, she asked about how much we thought the house was worth, and her appraisal came back at 5k below what we told her, lol.

 

[DawnM]

We had some issues with our appraisal. We too have a very unique property with acreage. He appraised us SO LOW and compared our home by price per square feet only and didn't take into account any upgrades or all of the land.

Thankfully we still had enough equity. We griped about it and were told that for refinancing they appraise lower. GRRR!!!!!!!! $400 and not even an accurate appraisal!

Dawn

 

[Kay1]

Our papers just arrived an hour ago. We're using Wells Fargo's easy (free) 3-step refinancing for a lower rate. We went from 5.75 down to 4.85%. Maybe you could do something like that and not worry about losing any money.

 

[FoundMyPrince]

Not sure if this is the place to ask this, but....have any of you refinanced a mortgage lately?

I am considering it, since the rates are so low. The biggest issue is the home appraisal, since accurate comps are really hard to come by for my home (we have an older home on a good amount of land, totally unique & highly upgraded). I am afraid that it will appraise low if comps are the basis for the appraisal & then we would lose the $400 we would have to put out.

Anyways, if you have gone through the process...what steps did you take? How did you choose a lender?

Thanks!

We had our original home loan with a local bank; purchased our home at 6.25% in Feb 2007. A friend who works at the bank actually called us and said "this is too good to pass up"! We refinanced September 2 at 4.25%. We are saving about $270/month!!

I too was concerned about the appraisal. Ours came in a $10,000 above what we paid for the home in 2007.

 

[Molliday]

Make sure the lender has an actual appraisal performed on your house, and does not simply order a broker price opinion. For a hard to comp property, you need a licensed appraiser that knows how to do proper adjustments.

Good luck! We tried to refinance not too long ago, but couldn't because of our pool.

 

[ICF]

Just did a refi about a 2 hours ago, through a local bank.

Went from 5 1/2% to 4 3/8%. Our closing costs came to about $325! Given the decrease in our payments, I'll make that $325 back in about 2 months.

As far as our appraisal....it came back about $8K lower than the last one we did back in 2007 (in order to drop PMI). Given that our LTV is less than 80% (even with the lower appraised amount) I didnt really care one way or another. I don't know if the lower value is due to the drop in housing prices or simply a difference in opinions by the appraisers.

 

[mrsklamc]

Check with a credit union. Ours did everything free, paid the appraiser and no closing costs, and no PMI even though our LTV would have required it with a traditional lender.

 

[minnie1928]

Our papers just arrived an hour ago. We're using Wells Fargo's easy (free) 3-step refinancing for a lower rate. We went from 5.75 down to 4.85%. Maybe you could do something like that and not worry about losing any money.

We did that as well. I'm waiting for my papers to arrive, but we dropped to 4.75% and it's not costing us a penny to do it.

 

[DawnM]

We were not offered a refi for free through a current lender. I wonder why? They told us we would have to go through the entire process again. It was Citimortgage.

We did get 4.37% interest though compared to our 5.37%, so I know it will even out soon.

We also had another glitch because DH got promoted 2 years ago, which is great, but it also meant that since he is in finance we had a long list of lenders we were NOT allowed to use. Wells Fargo and BofA were both on the list.

Dawn

 

[DawnM]

What do you mean you couldn't because of your pool?

Dawn

Make sure the lender has an actual appraisal performed on your house, and does not simply order a broker price opinion. For a hard to comp property, you need a licensed appraiser that knows how to do proper adjustments.

Good luck! We tried to refinance not too long ago, but couldn't because of our pool.

 

[herdtoDisney]

I don't think Wells Fargo offers the free refinancing in all states. I'm in CT and they did not offer to me when I called to ask (I have a mortgage through them now), they wanted $3000. We have great credit and a chunk of equity. I was disappointed.

I am closing in a couple weeks through our credit union-it's closer to $2000, plus the $295 apprasial fee, but we're going from 5.65 to 4.375.

The appraisal actually came back higher than I thought. It was thourough, guy came in , walked around and took pictures. Last appraisal we had (last year) they just drove by. Maybe you can ask for the kind of appraisial I had, since just pulling comps would not be accurate for you, OP. It was very detailed, an interesting read.

 

[mickeytattoo95]

We just refinanced at 4.375 two weeks ago. The appraisal was a disappointment. It came out 5K higher than when we purchased it 2 years ago and we had to put 20K into before we moved it because it was a short-sale house in bad shape. We were going to contest the appraisal, but my lender worked things out so we still didn't have to pay a PMI. That appraisal was so frustrating though! We were told here weren't any good comps.

 

[jandmmom]

Thanks everyone! Keep the ideas coming! I am going to make some phone calls this week to different banks. I am in PA, so I am not sure about the free deal from Wells Fargo. Ironically when I got home there was a Fedex from Citimortgage (our lender) encouraging us to refinance! I am not sure that they will be the best deal, but I will look into it.

THANKS

 

[Swimalie]

We are in the process of refinancing right now. Our appraisal was last Wed and we are waiting for the report now. We bought in 2006 and since then our house has lost roughly $150,000 in value. Luckily, we put enough down that we're okay but we're close as to whether or not we have the 20% equity now. I was with the appraiser and did a walk through. I had to point out to him every improvement we've done to the house since we bought it (painted every room, new patio, glass shower door, etc). This, we hope will help. The only comp in our neighborhood sold in April so we are in a similar situation as you. The appraiser said he will just go out to other neighborhoods and towns until he found enough comps to make his report.

Oh and we're going with BB&T at 4.5%.

 

[monorailsilver]

We just sent our papers back to the bank today.

We locked in at 3.8 but we are doing a 15 year. It will save us around $16-18,000 over the next 15 years and around $150/month.

 

[mamaLori05]

we just refi'd a few weeks ago. We also just finished building our house this past Nov, so we have had 2 appraisals within a very short amount of time. They did come into the house and do the appraisal both times, and both times came back with a different #. Our latest appraisal came back a few grand higher, so housing is starting to go back up, or at least it is in our area. With both appraisals they did look at comps in the area and they were considered very strongly against our house. In fact based on the #'s they came back with they relied very heavily on the comp's. If the comp's are very low around you, than there is a good chance your house will come back lower than you are thinking.

 

[mousefan1972]

We're refinancing right now. The appraisal was yesterday. Our new terms are 15 years, 3.875% fixed. Old loan was 25 years, 4.125%. DH is a financial advisor, so he is always checking rates for clients. When he sees something that could be good for us, we look into it. We bought our current home in 2003 and this will be the second, and hopefully last, re-fi....

 

[Molliday]

What do you mean you couldn't because of your pool?

Dawn

Because the pool loan, when rolled into my mortgage, would be considered cash out (even though we wouldn't actually be receiving any money).

Values aren't high enough in my area right now. In order to refinance, my house would have to appraise for about $15k more than I think it will right now.

 

[frannn]

Citimortgage is our current lender, but we had to go through the entire process again to refinance. Wish we could've just gotten a rate adj, but Citi doesn't do that . We have 17 years left on our loan at 6.125, and are refinancing to a 15 year loan at 4.25. We are saving about 30/month, cutting two years off the loan, and lowering our rate by almost 2%. Would have been amazing to not have to pay all the associated closing fees, but still saving about 30K in total.