Refinance?

[Born2Travel]

Anyone have recommendations or cautions on refinancing? I have one quote so far from Quicken loans - the fees seem high. I started by just requesting info online but that makes me a little nervous since I don't recognize a lot of the lenders names that come up. I am also checking with Citimortgage who currently holds the loan. This is for our second home which will (hopefully) become our primary home soon. The primary goal is to lower the rate (currently 5.87%) TIA

 

[geekette]

closing costs and fees seem a lot higher than they used to be. Check INGDirect.com as they have been promoting different specials. And don't forget to give your current mortgage-holder a chance to keep your biz.

 

[presley]

Check out a refi with your current lender. That has always worked to be our best deal - even when shopping around a lot. Sometimes, you can even skip through a lot of the paperwork.

 

[K&PFitz]

Check with a local, community bank. Their fees may be less.

Just so you know, the lender must give you a Good Faith Estimate of your closing costs before they can collect any fees from you. You must let them know of your intent to proceed before they can collect fees. Therefore, you can shop around without paying through the nose.

We just refinanced at 3.375 for 15 years. At 5.87%, you'd quickly save enough interest to cover the fees.

 

[easyrider]

Quicken charges a $500 up front bullony fee. Google Quicken complaints.

Bank of America, especially crappy service for loans, will take too long on a loan. The rates curently 3.75 and costs are not bad. Chase wants 4.25 for a 15 year loan.

Call a mortgage broker if you have good credit and debt to income is good. The rates and fee's are smaller, imo.

We used a mortgage broker with 0 points / 3.25 on 15 year loan. Loan costs are under $3000.00. Up front fee was $19.00 for the credit check. We could have paid the loan costs with the new loan but decided to pay cash on the costs.

 

[SDKath]

My friend refinanced with Quicken and while the rate was good, it took 5 months to close! It was a total nightmare.

We are in the middle of a refi right now with Wells Fargo. LOTS of required paperwork now and VERY tight requirements to qualify for a loan, but at least it is moving forward and the rate is fantastic. We compared to a loan broaker's best rates as well as our credit union. WF came in the lowest and since it is our bank, I felt comfortable going forward.

But fees (even 0pt loan fees) can be very high nowadays and the demand for documentation is really out of control WF wanted us to justify EVERY SINGLE deposit into our primary checking account going back 2 months! It was insane.

 

[Sandi Bo]

Be careful, I think with Quicken you have to give your SSN - thus they are pulling a credit report on you = lowering your credit score. If you are refinancing, the hits could make a difference in your rate. I tried to get a quote from Quicken, but I wouldn't give them my SSN so didn't get far with them.

I THINK we are closing next week on a 3.25, 0 points, 15 year with $1400 closing costs. Today, about 6pm I got what I THINK should be the final piece of documentation needed for the underwriters.

I did not give out my SSN to anyone and we still had some unknown hits on our credit report, I'm sure from my search for rates.

We did end up going with a local bank, although they are reselling immediately. That might be why the crazy requirement for documentation, at least that's what they say.

I like amerisave.com's website. You can check rates online, yourself, and they don't require your SSN. However, we did not go with them. We got about the same deal with the local bank.

This has been the most ridiculous experience ever. We got 2 appraisals, the first one was $35,000 lower than the second one. I did a lot of research myself of the market around us, documented all the improvements (yes, some just maintenance) that we've done over the years, and challenged the 1st appraisal. All I got was, "you aren't an MLS agent like she (the appraiser) was, you can't see pictures of the interiors of the comps, ya da ya da ya da". By doing so, I had some great documentation for our 2nd appraiser. He was happy to be handed the details, and as a result I think we got a much better (and I think fair) appraisal.

Then there is the documentation as someone else mentioned. Tax returns aren't good enough anymore, they need transcripts from the IRS. Copies of all our investments, 401K's, etc. In late September they want something more current than June 30th. Why doesn't it make sense to them, that is the last statement we have for our accounts where we only get quarterly statements. I'm still waiting for some of our 3rd quarter statements, which I need to provide at closing. I don't remember providing my 401K statements before.

I sure hope this is my last refinance ever! Good luck if you go for it. The rates are great, but the process is tough.

 

[csudell]

check out www.compareinterestrates.com to get you rates and brokers.

 

[Born2Travel]

Thanks for the comments - ugh! this doesn't sound like it's gonna be much fun - yes, Quicken pulled our credit report before I knew what was happening! I wish I'd posted here first. He told me it would only lower our credit score a couple of points and it would be back up in a couple of months. I hope that's correct. We have excellent credit so I don't think it will hurt much if he's correct with the "couple" of points. I'm still trying to contact Citimortgage who currently holds the loan but spent a "while" on hold this morning waiting for them to get me through to someone - finally they said I could continue to hold or they'd have someone call me back in 48 hrs. Waiting... I think our biggest problem is that the property is in Florida (extra fees) and values are low - we've only owned 3 years so not a lot of equity snce values have fallen, but we bought low and made a large down payment so we still owe less than they say the property is worth. I may try to find a local mortgage broker and see if I have better luck while waiting. With Quicken it lowers our payments about $100 - not as much as I'd hoped. And that's rolling the fees in which I didn't ask for. Might prefer to pay fees upfront rather than finance them for 30 years.

 

[esk444]

The lowest rates on those comparison websites are usually mortgage brokers or banks that charge insanely high junk fees (i.e. TD Bank). A lot of mortgage brokers get their loans from regional banks like Fifth Third Bank, Ever Bank in Jacksonville, or Key Bank. So you might want to check those places out and play them against each other and mortgage brokers to get them to reduce or waive their junk fees.

The national banks always seem to charge higher rates and have a moderate amount of junk fees.

I'd also check with any credit unions that you might be eligible to join.
Someone told me that AAA and Costco have mortgage broker affliations where they have negotiated reasonable fees and rates. So if you are a member, you should check those out too.

 

[Born2Travel]

Thanks, esk444 - good information. I talked to one local (Jacksonville) lender this morning and am waiting to hear back. Still no luck with Citimortgage; I'd like to talk to them before doing anything else. No luck getting any breakdowns from Quicken on their fees (must be a reason for that?) I am continuing to search and compare, but it's hard to find much time during the work day. I will try to contact some more local lenders.

 

[Born2Travel]

I THINK we are closing next week on a 3.25, 0 points, 15 year with $1400 closing costs. Today, about 6pm I got what I THINK should be the final piece of documentation needed for the underwriters.

This has been the most ridiculous experience ever.

I sure hope this is my last refinance ever! Good luck if you go for it. The rates are great, but the process is tough.

Souds like you did very well (I'd love to have the same deal) but what a pain - I'm beginning to see that already and we have excellent credit and income as well as savings, investments, and a couple of other properties which we own free and clear as well as a rental which covers it's own mortgage plus part of this one but they don't seem to care much about any of that - what an odd process.

 

[SDKath]

That's a great rate, SandyBo!

We have a jumbo loan and we just did 3.5% for 7yr ARM here in California. The process has really gotten to be a pain but we are going from 4.75% to 3.5% so it's a HUGE savings on a big loan.

It's a good idea to try the bank you are with currently but when we did that, we didn't get nearly as good of a rate and they told me we will have to do the whole app anyway with credit reports, past taxes, etc so it would not have saved us any time.

Katherine

 

[durrod]

For people OK with an ARM should look at ING direct. Low rates and reasonable fees. You can see all the closing costs right online without giving any information to them. Note that their rates assume an excellent credit.