Mortgage Refinance

When the phone rings, I try not to let my husband pick it up. He’s not gullible by any definition of the word, but he still likes to humor telemarketers. He will let them go through their entire sales pitch, and will sometimes even ask a few follow-up questions before telling them that we are not interested, but thank you. Lately, he even considered refinancing through someone who called our home, until her rudeness to me made me put an end to it.

It seems to me that there are better ways of getting a good deal on your mortgage than answering the phone when random people call and hoping that one of them has a good rate for you. There are scammers that operate their own little call centers, and they just need your social, if you please. I usually tell people that they are mistaken – we don’t own a house.

There are many advantages to refinancing your mortgage, but it is really important that the reasons for refinancing are legitimate and that in the long run will save you money in some way.

Refinancing a mortgage is usually done to lower the monthly payments, either by obtaining a lower interest rate or by extending the length of the mortgage. It is a great idea to use the money you save on the mortgage payments to pay down on the principal of the loan which will further reduce your payments and length of time you will make payments for. However, you may want to use the money that you are saving on payments to do some improvements on your home which will increase its value, or to translate the savings in to cash to pay off other loans or expenses.

The first place to start your search to refinance your existing mortgage is your current mortgage company. If you have an FHA mortgage the government provides another program that allows anyone to refinance their mortgage regardless of credit history. This program is called the FHA Streamline.

The program is a lifesaver for many people. You simply call a mortgage lender that offers an FHA Streamline program. They then take a loan application and run a credit check. However the only thing they can look at is whether the mortgage payment has been on time every month. If it has been, you then qualify without having to prove income. In most cases a new appraisal is not even required.