Home Mortgage Questions

If

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life is too busy right now to just sit down and spend a lot of time researching

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then there IS an

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advantage to using a mortgage broker

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You might pay a little bit more in fees, but they have the ability to rate shop at many different financial arms. You can always come back here and paste the fees for the MT mortgage specialists to let you know if it is high or really reasonable.

I used a lady with SWBC out of Prairieville, but she has since moved to the SWBC office in Killeen, TX. She was very sharp and made the process much easier than it could have been. I got a great rate and the fees were reasonable.

We are going through the process currently. Last time I bought a house was in 2005, and the amount of paperwork and verification they need today compared to 2005 is intense. In 2005 I bought a house worth 3x my income using nothing but a job offer letter. Today, they've asked for everything but a urine sample.

If you can pay 20 percent down, you can avoid PMI, so I would try to do that if you can.

We used a broker, and I have not been impressed, but I am too far down the road to start over. But I think this is just this particular broker, which is upsetting because several people I know recommended the broker.

We got pre-approved by the same broker, which turned out to be completely useless. They pretty much re-underwrote everything again, asked for all new documentation, etc. We purchased less than our pre-approved amount, and still it doesn't matter. Also, apparently, our pre-approval didn't account for required flood insurance, which is stunning to me considering we live in S. Louisiana, and they have used that as the reason we needed to get approved all over again.

Also, the appraisal process is much slower this time around.

You look to be in a good situation, so you should be fine, but just know that banks are a lot more diligent these days.

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I've got one with an 85/15 no PMI.

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Did you have to pay a premium in points or interest rate?

Doesn't cost you anything out of pocket . They'll make $ by spread, fees, or % of loan package. That $ will be financed into loan somewhere between 2-4% over 3-30 years.

I locked in a rate of 3.875 with 5% down on a $225k purchase price and "no pmi" a couple weeks ago. Basically it's lender paid PMI. The rate would have been 3.625 with a monthly PMI of about $100 otherwise. This is a conventional loan, and other than the rate increase there was no additional cost. I was happy with the $60 something dollars in monthly savings, and while PMI could have eventually be removed down the road, I probably won't be there long enough for this to have come into play. I have enough to put down 20% but don't see the value in that personally.

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1-2 max % of loan amount Id guess. So assuming 400k loan financed over 30 years at 3.75% about $18-$30 a month

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Or also stated as $4000-8000 for the same loan.

Thanks for the heads up. I guess I will plan on spending a few hours calling around and finding the best deal instead of paying somebody else thousands of dollars to do that.