Refi: Want To Tell Off Everyone (appraisal, insurance, percentage, property)
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We had no mortgage, but then decided we wanted to borrow $20K for some landscaping.
Our credit union ate $1600 in fees.
Loan is 3.25% for 5 years.
I looked at rates and no way could have gotten lower at that time.
That's not a refi. That's a home equity loan. COMPLETELY different things, apples and peas.
The first is just a rant. Is there ANY lender out there that doesn't try and rope you in the second you hit their site? Almost all of them have "loan calculators" that, to me, border on bait and switch, and make me bounce off the page and not even want to do business with them.
You enter the numbers. Then hit "calculate", "get quote", or whatever and boom: Before any info is revealed, they ask for name, address, email, etc. I don't want to give all of that out. I made that mistake once and these guys are like vultures. It's gotten so frustrating and annoying that now, I spam THEIR inboxes with names like Elmer Fudd, Bubba Gump, and Up Yours, all accompanied with a dead/invalid email address and the phone number to the BBB.
Can I just shop and get some info from anyone without having to give all that out first? It's not that I'm opposed to giving it out per se. I'm just annoyed at this tactic that, to me, seems desperate if not outright deceptive. And so, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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The second part is: does it even make sense for me to refi...assuming I even could, taking into account points, fees, etc. Here are my approximate numbers:
State: CA Type: Refi-Single Family Residence Amount Owed: $190k Est Property Value: $210-$220k Credit: 740-ish Current Interest: 4.875% Type: FHA Property Tax: Approx 2k annually Mortgage Ins: $1200/annually (I bought at end of Q2 '09, so I've heard that this payment has skyrocketed since then; and has been an impediment to me in the past: the 'lower payment' was effectively washed out by a much, much higher insurance payment, meaning that the bottom line was minimal or no change to how much I spend each month)
Total monthly payment: $1400 (includes taxes into impound acct, aforementioned mortgage insurance)
And yeah. I know that first time/FHA buyers tend to be viewed as third class citizens. But in the 5½ years I've been here, have not been even one day delinquent one time. And my FICO reflects that.
Any input welcome.
Value is going to drive what you can and can't do. If you get 220K, you have a great shot at doing piggy back and avoiding PMI all together, compounding your savings. If you can't dump the PMI, you are correct, makes no sense to trade a pink room for a blue room.
To get a quote from an unethical annoying company, why not use something like Roboform to get an Elmer Fudd quote, and keep doing that with all of them, till you find a quote you like, then decide whether it's worth actually applying?
Why not try the mortgage professor? You can generate quotes with real financial data and they won't contact you unless you select one of the quoted options. I've run a lot of scenarios through his loan engine and haven't received a single solicitation.
They did NOT pay your closing costs. It's in your interest rate. I guarantee you 100% that if you wanted to pay your own closing costs, you would have gotten a lower rate. Banks/Credit Unions don't do anything for free. It's the new way of paying closing costs without increasing the loan amount so people think it's free, but you're paying for it over the life of your loan.
Well, it was 3.74%, which at the time I got it was a pretty good rate (rates have come down a bit more since), especially considering it was a baby loan (under $100k), which a lot of banks don't even do. It was maybe .25% higher than market for a regular sized loan, but baby loans always carry a premium anyway, for banks that are willing to do them at all. I work in a real estate office, so I did my research ahead of time. Even if it was .25% premium for paying my closing costs (which I don't think it was), that amounts to $2400 over the 12 year loan. When I tried to refi through Wells Fargo (where my old loan was with), the closing costs on my quote were over $4000. I got a quote from Guild Mortgage, and they were also over $4000. I opted not to refi that time. So either way, if there was any premium, which there did not seem to be, it was still much less than the closing costs would have been otherwise.
I did my research before I went in, and going in, with all the factors figured in, I said to my husband, "if the rate they quote is less than 3.75%, and the closing costs really are $0, we're going to do it." And that's pretty much exactly what they quoted me (without me telling them what I had in my head).
Also, credit unions do some things for free. They are non-profit and required to roll any would-be profits back to their customers' benefit. They did require us to open a free checking account there and put at least $5 into it. My husband's bank was being bought out that same month, so opted to just move all of his money over to the credit union, so now we really are a customer.
Oh, and interestingly, my loan is not amortized. It is like a car loan, where the amount going to principal is the same throughout. So my balance goes down much faster at the beginning than an amortized loan.
I ran into the same problem when I wanted to try to find out loan information to present to a buyer who might look at our house when we offered it for sale. Could not find out any real information but did have a loan officer at our bank talk with me and it turned out the buyer had their own loan set up anyway but I could not understand why they had to make it so difficult and it was impossible for me to put in terms for an unknown person.
i was responding to the OP post... FHA streamline refi - 0/0 - do not go through a major firm - use a mortgage broker with lower overhead.
I knew you were, I was just saying it may or may not be an option.
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