Anyone refinance lately?

[DawnM]

Oh, I thought you meant the actual pool itself was the problem....you mean the loan for the pool is the problem! Thanks for clarifying.

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.

 

[DawnM]

We had citimortgage too. We switched.

We went from a 5.37% to 4.37% in January. The payments are higher as we went to a 15 year, but it is saving us OVER $100K in interest.

Dawn

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.

 

[Molliday]

Oh, I thought you meant the actual pool itself was the problem....you mean the loan for the pool is the problem! Thanks for clarifying.

Dawn

Oh, no ...lol. Bad sentence structure on my part! New lending rules is what bit me, not the pool itself!

 

[princessmorgan]

We just refinanced with Wells Fargo. We couldn't do the easy 3 step plan, because we had PMI. We found out though that Freddie Mac owns our mortgage and they had appraised the home for a lot more than what it's worth when they bought the mortgage. So Wells Fargo used that number, and we didn't have to have an appraisal! Now we don't have PMI anymore We went from 7% to 4.75% which is saving us around $450 a month

 

[jessrose18]

have a closing date set for friday, oh imagine that he called today and said can we do monday? Lets just say this is the 20th bonehead move our guy has made. I told him I took friday off of work we are coming friday, he will now have to talk to his manager We have Usbank, had an appraisal which came out good, have pmi, still will but less per month, cut rate will save $150 a month. Our easy process wasnt so much, but our guy 1/2 the problem I think. I will feel much better when its all over! We got 4.9 w/ no closing costs for a 30 year.

 

[rie'smom]

We're waiting for our final papers. our rate is 3.8. Our monthly payment will increase a little but we're refinancing for a shorter term-we'll be paid off in 7 years.

 

[clj1410]

We signed our papers today! We were at 5.62 with Citimortgage and had 18 years left. We closed at 3.75 for 15 years. Our payment didn't go down, but we have 3 years less on our mortgage

Also our appraisal came back $31000 more then we though our house was worth

 

[branv]

We started to do this, but the two quotes we received (one from a mortgage broker, another from our current loan holder, Countrywide/Bank of America) had such high closing costs. $3-$4K! Call me weird, but it's annoying that it's as much as our closing costs were on the original loan.

Our original loan was $135K at 6.25%, now we owe about $123K, but our value hasn't really gone up much in the 5 years we've held the loan. So we won't, sadly, get rid of our PMI, but will lower our monthly payment and still lose 5 years off the loan. I know in the long run it would be a great idea, but that money up front is a bit to swallow. And rolling it back into the loan just mentally irritates as it would put back on almost 1/3 of what we've paid off of the original loan.

Funny how spending money to save money in the long run can be SO hard!

 

[kat08]

We just closed 2 weeks ago and are saving a ton! We rolled our 2nd mortgage into our 1st and are still paying around $20/month less on our 1st mortgage than before. We went from a 30 yr 6% fixed to a 30 yr 4.5% fixed. We used MiLend out of Atlanta and used the appraiser that they sent out. She appraised us surprisingly high. It was lower than we appraised a few years ago but it was close...which was a bit surprising b/c of the market. Anywhoo...we are quite happy with how things turned out.

 

[Swimalie]

We got our appraisal results yesterday and we made the 20% and some!! We were worried since the market is horrible in this area. We bought at the peak in 2006 and even though we put down 35% we weren't sure of the current appraised value of our house. Now we're on track for our closing on Oct 28th and we'll save over $290 a month.

 

[DawnM]

I am getting a quote for 3.25% with Amerisave for a 15 year. There are some fees, but it would save us another 35K over the life of our loan. It will also be $200 less in payment per month, which I would love to just keep paying, bringing our interest down even further!

We have already been approved verbally, but I don't see a problem. Our credit is in the 800 range. I am just waiting for DH to get back to me on what he wants to do.

Thoughts? Should we go for it? I can't imagine rates will come down any lower, but I never imagined they would be this low!

 

[sophie832]

My mom keeps bugging me about refinancing...I think she's crazy because we bought our home in Oct. of 2009 at 5% for 30 years. We went with an FHA loan, and thus have PMI. I think our house would appraise at the same value, and reducing the interest rate by 1% would decrease our payments by about $150/mo. I don't think it would be worth all the hassle. Our mortgage is with BofA, and it doesn't look like they are offering the free refinance like Wells Fargo or other banks. Is there any reason for us to even contemplate refinancing?

 

[DawnM]

Look at Bankrate.com and check out their calculators. What is the bottom line amoritization of the loan? Will you save much in the overall loan? Could you pay the same amount you are now and move to a 15 year loan, or pay a little more and pay it off in 15 years?

What is the difference in interest between 30 years and 15 on your loan?

Dawn

My mom keeps bugging me about refinancing...I think she's crazy because we bought our home in Oct. of 2009 at 5% for 30 years. We went with an FHA loan, and thus have PMI. I think our house would appraise at the same value, and reducing the interest rate by 1% would decrease our payments by about $150/mo. I don't think it would be worth all the hassle. Our mortgage is with BofA, and it doesn't look like they are offering the free refinance like Wells Fargo or other banks. Is there any reason for us to even contemplate refinancing?

 

[DawnM]

Not hard for me! I am willing to pay it as long as I know our break even point.

DH ran some numbers today and we will break even in less than 2 years and we plan to stay here long term.

In fact, if we do this (3.25% interest on a 15 over our current 4.37%), we will save 30K more on our loan over 15 years.

Pay $4K to save $30K.....no brainer for us.

Dawn

We started to do this, but the two quotes we received (one from a mortgage broker, another from our current loan holder, Countrywide/Bank of America) had such high closing costs. $3-$4K! Call me weird, but it's annoying that it's as much as our closing costs were on the original loan.

Our original loan was $135K at 6.25%, now we owe about $123K, but our value hasn't really gone up much in the 5 years we've held the loan. So we won't, sadly, get rid of our PMI, but will lower our monthly payment and still lose 5 years off the loan. I know in the long run it would be a great idea, but that money up front is a bit to swallow. And rolling it back into the loan just mentally irritates as it would put back on almost 1/3 of what we've paid off of the original loan.

Funny how spending money to save money in the long run can be SO hard!

 

[mrsklamc]

My mom keeps bugging me about refinancing...I think she's crazy because we bought our home in Oct. of 2009 at 5% for 30 years. We went with an FHA loan, and thus have PMI. I think our house would appraise at the same value, and reducing the interest rate by 1% would decrease our payments by about $150/mo. I don't think it would be worth all the hassle. Our mortgage is with BofA, and it doesn't look like they are offering the free refinance like Wells Fargo or other banks. Is there any reason for us to even contemplate refinancing?

PMI has to do with your loan to value amount, not the fact that you're an FHA loan. Yes, you should definately talk to lenders about whether you can refinance. We were able to refi with our credit union to a 15 year loan rather than a 30, and get rid of PMI altogether because the credit union flat out doesn't do it. With the lower interest rate, we saved in the neighborhood of $200,000 of the life of the loan. It doesn't cost anything to look into it at least, and I could deal with a lot of hassle for $200k.

 

[BabyTigger99]

Instead of refinancing, we ended up selling our house!!! We bought our old house in 2002 for $122000, interest rate of 6%. Wound up selling it in 20 days from signing to put it on the market to accepting an offer. Ended up getting $137500 for it. Bought our new house for $185000, interest rate of 4.5%, and our payment for the new house (which is only 7 years old, and has 3 1/2 bathrooms, compared to our old house that only had one!) only went up $200 a month!

 

[Molliday]

Instead of refinancing, we ended up selling our house!!! We bought our old house in 2002 for $122000, interest rate of 6%. Wound up selling it in 20 days from signing to put it on the market to accepting an offer. Ended up getting $137500 for it. Bought our new house for $185000, interest rate of 4.5%, and our payment for the new house (which is only 7 years old, and has 3 1/2 bathrooms, compared to our old house that only had one!) only went up $200 a month!

This is what we're doing too.

We can't list our house until the beginning of the year though, so we're crossing our fingers that rates stay low. I've been basing everything off of 5%, hoping that they at least don't get higher than that.

Once we list our house, we can build on a contingency, and the builder allows a 180 lock if you use their lender.

 

[mom2aredhead]

15 years, 4.00, no points. Some closing costs, but in NY when you re-fi there is mortgage tax involved. Some fees were reduced/waived because we were current customers. HOWEVER, even with our equity position, 800+ credit scores, it took 4 months.

Edited to add: This is with Bank of America and we were already their customers. Way too long in the processing department. All other things being equal, I'd recommend going elsewhere.

 

[Planogirl]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this but do check your credit reports first. It can take some time to clear up things that don't belong if you have any of that.