Mortgage Loan Options Going Exotic

May 24th, 2010 - 

In the past, a person had limited options when borrowing money for a home purchase. These days, there are exotic mortgage loan options that satisfy just about every borrowing need.

Creative Mortgages

Getting a loan for a home purchase can be very stressful. What if you dont qualify? How humiliated will you be? These days, theres no reason to worry. The mortgage lending market has a solution for just about everyone.

1. Do the Two Step. The Two-Step Mortgage is a mixed interest rate loan. Essentially, the loan provides a lower fixed interest rate for a period of 5 years or so and then adjusts to a new rate at the end of the period. The new rate is dependent upon the interest rates being charged at the time of the change. This loan can be helpful for borrowers who are squeezing into a loan since the initial period tends to have a lower interest rate than a straight fixed interest loan.

2. Graduated Payments Graduated Payment Mortgages are loans that, well, have a graduated payment schedule. Depending on the specific lender, the first five to seven years of mortgage payments will be 10 to 20 percent lower than a fixed rate mortgage. After the prescribed time, the payments will actually be higher than a fixed rate loan. The advantage of this loan is two fold. First, it lets you borrow more money than a fixed loan because you can qualify for the lower initial payments. Second, the loan is optimal if you are expecting to sell the house within the initial five-year period after significant appreciation.

3. Sharing Appreciation Shared Appreciation Mortgages are typically provided by private investors and even family members. In essence, you borrow money to purchase a home by agreeing to share a percentage of future appreciation in the home with the lender. Private lenders can want as much as fifty percent of the appreciation, but they will significantly lower the interest rate on the loans. SAMs should really only be used if you have horrible credit and no other options.

There three loan options are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mortgages. If you need to get creative, find a reputable mortgage broker in your area and see what they can come up with for you.

Mortgage Borrowing Tip – Length of Loan

April 12th, 2010 - 

When borrowing money for a mortgage, homebuyers are primarily concerned with simply qualifying. Still, paying attention to the length of the loan is a borrowing tip that can save you a ton of money.

Home Loans

In the mortgage industry, the length of your loan used to be the only major issue you had to deal with. How times have changed! In the current market, the variety of loans that exist are simply stunning. Of course, the massive increase in loan options has inevitably led to massive confusion.

Borrowing Tip

Regardless of the type of loan you go with, you should always try to keep your loan term as short as possible. The shorter the loan period, the less you will pay in interest. Here an example using 15 and 30 year loans.

Assume our first homebuyer gets a 100,000 loan at 8 percent interest. He length of the loan is 30 years with a monthly payment of 733.76. For this mortgage, our homebuyer is going to pay 164,155.25 in interest over the life of the loan.

Now, take the same scenario, but reduce the term of the loan to 15 years. Our homebuyer is going to see the monthly payment bumped to 955.65 per month. Over the length of the loan, our homebuyer is going to pay 90,000 less in interest payments over the life of the loan. On top of this, the house will be paid off in half the time.

When borrowing money for a home purchase, you have to carefully budget your finances. If you can afford increased monthly payments, however, a shorter loan length is going to save you a lot of money over time.