We refinanced a few years ago and reduced our mortgage by a few hundred dollars. My brother and his wife just bought a house in September and just refinanced their mortgage from $1300/month to $800/month!! This will enable by sil to be a sahm!!

Anyone planning on it?

We're not refinancing. We have a good fixed interest rate.

Changing a mortgage payment so drastically like they did, I wonder what they changed? Be wary... I think it would be very hard to make a significant difference with a refi with a fixed interest rate right now unless the house was bought back in the day of the 7-8.5% interest rates of the 1990's.

What happened was, my brother didn't take my advice in the first place and he went with a mortgage broker. After a few months in their house they realized that they were paying an awful lot for what they had and he looked into my bank. The interest rate was better and my bank doesn't have PMI.

wow that's quite a step down in a mortgage.

we are currently refinancing but for other reasons (long stupid don't even want to go there explanation about our bank :lol: )

we just got all the notifications today that we're ready to close.

Sounds like a great deal Lisa.

We had PMI for the first 14 months of our mortgage. We chose to do that because we needed more held back for repairs and such. We also knew the market was going up fast. So, we had a reappraisal 14 months later. Our house appraised for just enough to take away from the PMI. However, that increased our property taxes making us end up right back where we started. :lol: I just think that is a funny story.

We refi'd in December. We were caught in an ARM and we saved about $300 by doing so. We were fortunate to snatch a 5.5% fixed.

I haven't but they thought has crossed my mind to look into it if the rates come down more. Does anyone know if we refinance through our current company if they make you get a new appraisal? We have Chase, and I'm sure it probably varies from company to company but I'm too lazy to call and sit on hold for 30 minutes right now. Anyone refi through Chase before?

We're thinking about it. Ours isn't bad but I'm thinking even going down one percentage point (from 6.8 to 5-something) might help.

i don't think it's in the 5's anymore though...but it certainly could change any day.

it is in the upper 5's as of the end of last week. We are considering a refi .

ours will be 6% - we could have done 5.85, but we'd have had to pay more fees and opted to go up a little (it didn't make much difference in monthly payments between 5.85 and 6)

we got it locked in, in writing, while we deal with underwriting.


DEFINITELY a *huge* difference in payments for us.

We just closed on our refinance this past week. We kept basically the same payment, but dropped from a 30 year loan to a 15 year. That was more important to us than dropping our payment. In the end, we will have the house payed off 8 years earlier even if we only just make the regular payments. We've been here 7 years already.

Aileen

rates dropped dramatically last week (I work for a direct lender) and right now it's hovering around 5.25...it's supposed to go down a bit more but then jump up again, so if you're wanting to re-fi, go for it :)

we are closing on our purchase this week.... locked in at 5.5 and i'm stoked. :D

Would you refi and include 2nd mortgage and credit cards? My bank called and asked me if I wanted to for 5.25% int, but that was probably 2 weeks ago. My first mortgage is 5.5%. I have a home equity loan at 10% for 10 years and then too many credit cards with some as high as 29.9%. I was just worried about extending everything another 30 years.

I don't know how it is at other banks, but we refinanced at the same bank and we did not have to re-do the apprasial. My brother is switching banks so they had to have another apprasial. I talked to him on Easter and they added 10 years to their loan as well. They are younger (than me at least) and felt that since they just had a baby a few months ago and "oops" are due with another before the first baby turns one, they really needed the extra money each month for my sil to stay home because now she works part time but they can't afford babysitting for two kids.

Thanks Lisa - that's good to know. I think I'll call my bank today.

As for rolling in the other debt, I would do it if you are really convicted not to go into any more debt (cut up the cards, etc.). I think debt consolidation can be great as long as you aren't going to run up more bills. Otherwise, you are just going to compound the problem (I know because I've BTDT).

we had thought about it but we are at 5.75% fixed on a 15yr and we are down to 12yrs 3 months left on the loan. If things get horrible we could try to refi for a 30yr but right now we are making it thru (w out any extra most months but if it means our house will be ours in 12yrs instead of 30 we are willing to stick it out).

Well, I called and they said that because MI housing prices have gone down significantly, we'd have to do an appraisal. I am not sure why it really matter when we are not asking for any extra money. Bummer. :(

We had to do an appraisal, too. It has to do with loan limits, I think. They said we could refi 90% of the home's value and get cash back or 97% of the home's value straight up. And, by the time we paid the closing costs and lending fees, we ended up doing the 97% and just being able to pay those costs. But, over time, I know this is best for us. It just stinks now to see that money going *poof*