Not many homeowners are considering refinancing these days due to falling home values, but if you are one of the lucky ones, I'm sure you want to know your options. Mortgage rates are at record lows and some great tools have surfaced to help you decide if refinancing your home is an option. On bills.com, you can use their calculator to help, which will give you a "yes" or "no" answer. We all hate long forms and mid-way through we usually give up due to them asking so many questions. With this calculator, you just enter your current loans, goals for refinancing and your homes location, the New York Times reported.
The tool compares a user's current loan with refinancing options offered from lenders Bills.com works with that the user would qualify for, basing its answer on real-time feeds about these loans' rates and costs. The tool also shows users how much they would hypothetically save in payments and interest expenses by refinancing. [NYT]
Having this tool is great and I am a firm believer in knowing your options, especially in this economic time, but let's get down to the real issue here. Most homes don't have enough equity in them to refinance -worth less than the value of their mortgage. Due to the '05-'06 bubble, with the help of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with other federal subsidies, financed more than $1 trillion mortgages during that time. If you are one of the lucky homeowners that has the option to refinance, do your research.
No comments:
Post a Comment