If a person does “a great job at maintaining his bills” then he won’t have to worry about what interest rate his credit card carries, because he won’t be carrying a balance that the interest rate can apply to. If you’re carrying a balance on credit cards, then your downward spiral has already begun. That’s just not a smart use of credit.
Great. The people who need the lower rates, can’t get them so the cycle of Breckenridge foreclosure and tightened credit will continue. Brilliant thinking, Congress
Even with 20% down, credit scores residing in the 760’s, yet only in the 34th month of a 30 yr. conventional fixed mortgage, refinancing for us is shaping up to be nothing short of a ‘shell game’ in terms of perceived long term savings. With current appraised values of houses plummeting (avg. 15-30% in this portion of the Midwest) our lending institution will not even qualify us to refinance claiming (their rules) our LTV cannot exceed 90% of our houses current fair market value. Operative word “CURRENT”. In other words with a required re-appraisal, our house’s value drops, we lose roughly 90% of our equity, we will be required to roll in PMI, escrow and home insurance into our new, adjusted monthly mortgage payment, and we start back over at the full 360 month payment term. That and our up front costs include:
$300 for the appraisal
$350 (fixed) one time refinancing processing fee (per our lending institution)
$1500 for each additional % point we care to buy down our interest rate (max. of 2 pts.)
And since we only have one income right now, with no prospects in sight, refinancing seems just a little risky, if not completely un-worthwhile. What a lovely road we’re on!
Not really – the reason we are in the mess is because the Quora mortgage lenders didn’t follow these practices for the past 5 years or more. If they had been careful in their lending we would not be where we are. You people whining just don’t get it – we need tighter credit to get people on spending patterns that they can actually afford. Somehow a lot of people want us to get into a system of ‘ Credit Welfare ‘ where people are extended credit they have not earned and do not deserve backed by someone else.
No different than handing someone a check for work they refuse to do.
