Time Sensitive "Act now" Refinance Offer From Chase via Next Day Mail (PMI, interest rate)

[oldhousegirl]

Anyone familiar with this? Lower interest rate, approx a little under 2.00% less. No fees or any upfronts at all!! Delivered via UPS next day mail. Instantly leery of the "Hurry, you only have 5 days" approach. Good idea? What's in it for them? Why only (literally) 5 days in which to act?

[oregonwoodsmoke]

Yes! I just did one. It closed escrow yesterday.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

You have to act to get the lock on the rate that will last long enough to get escrow closed. They are sloooooww getting the refinance processed.

I got one of the fedex offers, but was already working with another offer from Chase. It did end up adding $800 to my balance, so it was not literally "no cost to me". Also, I had to come up with a cashier's check for the property taxes that were due the day of closing.

But no PMI and no escrow of taxes and insurance. $350 of the $800 increase was interest added onto the balance. That was always my expense, so it cost me roughly $500 to get my payments lowered $250 a month.

I suspect they do it because it is some federal program. it will add years to the end of your mortgage if you pay the lower amount. If you continue to pay the old payment amount at the lower rate you will get that thing payed off really quickly.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

The first thing I did when they started sending me those offers was to take the offer down to my local branch to verify that it was a legitimate offer and not some sort of scam.

[oldhousegirl]

Thanks for your response!! How long did it take to close, the whole processing part??