Refinance Your Mortgage
Your home is an investment. You can leverage your investment by refinancing your home. Refinancing can be done for many reasons, including to get cash from your home, lower your monthly payment, and shorter loan terms.
Refinance your mortgage means that you are basically trading in your existing mortgage for a more current one, often with a different principal and interest rate. The lender will then use the newer mortgage to repay the old one. This leaves you with only one loan and one monthly repayment.
Is now the right time for YOU to refinance?
Why Refinance?
Refinance your home for one of several reasons.
- Get a better rate and lower your monthly payment. This is the most common reason people refinance their mortgage. When rates go down, it makes sense to refinance your mortgage. The rule of thumb is if you can lower your rate by at least 1/2 a percentage point, it may be worth running the numbers.
- Cash out refinance. When you need money for home repairs or upgrades, getting a cash out mortgage refinance can do the trick. Your monthly payment may go up, but if you’re putting the money into your home, it may make financial sense.
- Pay off high interest credit cards and other debt. Those high interest credit cards, personal loans, and/or auto loans have high monthly payments and eat away at your monthly income. By refinancing and paying those loans off with a much lower interest rate, you can save hundreds of dollars each month. I’ve done refinances where the home owner paid off debt and saved almost a thousand dollars a month!
- Removing a borrower from the loan. This is common in divorces, and also in inherited properties, where one party needs to be taken off title and the loan needs to paid off to get this done.
When NOT to Refinance?
Refinancing your home loan can male financial sense most of the time, but there are times where the numbers don’t work, and it may be better to keep the loan you have.
Here are some reasons not to refinance.
- You are planning on moving in the next couple years. There are costs to refinancing – closing costs, prepaids for insurance and taxes, etc., and if you are planning on moving soon, you won’t have time to recover those costs with the monthly savings that you get.
- The new interest rate won’t save you much. Like I said above, it only makes sense if you can lower your interest rate by at least 1/2 percent. If you can’t do that, the closing costs that you have to pay will eat up any of the saving that you get. ALWAYS talk a mortgage professional and have them run the numbers for you!
- You are more than halfway through the term of your loan. If you have a 30 year loan, and have been paying it for 15 years, it may be a bad idea to refinance your loan. But on the other hand, it may make financial sense. This is the time you need to talk to your mortgage professional to run the numbers for you and show you your options.
Conclusion
Refinancing may be great idea, it can save you hundreds of dollars each month, and thousands over the life of the loan. But make sure you talk to a mortgage professional first so that he/she can run the numbers for you and talk about your options.
I’m Your first Call.
Your first step should always be to talk to a mortgage professional. Schedule a time speak with me today, it doesn’t matter if your’e already under contract, or if you are buying until next year. I need to make sure we get you ready, and that you’re doing the right things today, so when you do make an offer, you are all set. I see too many people that take advice from the internet or non-professionals and mess up their chances to buy.
Talk to Jesse – Mortgage Expert
My name is Jesse Rivera. I’m licensed in the State of California and I live and work in beautiful Long Beach, CA. I can do loans for the whole state of California, but I specialize in SoCal, especially Long Beach, Los Angeles County and Orange county.
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