Refinancing Thoughts
May 4th, 2007It’s been over a year since we bought the house, and thoughts of refinancing have been swimming through my head. I started shopping around to see if it made sense to refinance after Nickel was trying to decide when to refinance a mortgage. He had an opportunity to pay some closing costs and get a low interest rate, or take a slightly higher interest rate and avoid the closing costs of the refinance. He had not quite decided what to do and had more thoughts about refinancing which further developed the idea.
I don’t think that refinancing is quite going to work in our favor yet. We are well ahead of where we should be on paying down our loan, but I don’t think that we have paid it down quite enough yet. I think that once we have paid another $6000 towards the principle it will be worth trying to reexamine our refinancing options, since we still have a little less than 20% equity. We had gotten a split loan with the bulk of the loan at 6.25%, which we have been paying down on the 30 year fixed schedule. A small piece of the loan covered about 4% of the total loan price and came with a heavier price tag over 7%. We have paid down about a third of that loan already.
Getting back to Five Cent Nickel’s site, though, I recommend that you head over for a visit. I have been following three of his websites for most of the last two years, and he is having a two year anniversary celebration and giving away some prizes. You should at least leave a comment there and see if you can’t lessen my chances of winning an envelope full of bricks! He’s also giving away iPods and fun things of that nature.
May 7th, 2007 at 6:07 am
Anniversary Giveaway, Update #4…
Time for another update on the anniversary giveaway… We’re creeping ever close to 400 comments on the original contest announcement, and I’ve received an additional eight entries from bloggers who’ve posted articles highlighting my past pos…
May 8th, 2007 at 1:45 am
My wife and I refi our house, had a 5 year interest only loan, I wanted out of that. I went with American Mortgage Specialist from Phoenix. They were great, no cost at all, I even got back $800, which of course went to buying our new 52 inch tv (not) we put the money back into the house
chris
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:48 am
I had a very good experience refinancing. Although it was just to get a lower interest rate and not to take money out. There are a lot of streamline programs out there for home buyers but you have to inquire about them. If you don’t you can end up paying lots more in fees which will end up added to the back end of your mortgage.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I find it very unlikely that I would refinance a mortgage to get money back out. The idea is to get out of debt faster and cheaper, not to prolong it. Getting a lower interest rate is the best reason for refinancing.
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:33 pm
FWIW, there were tax stamps that needed to be re-purchased on a refi in our state that the broker wasn’t aware (it’s an uncommon thing to have to do for a refi) and that pushed the costs above being free, so I decided to sit tight.