Fixed-rate Mortgage

First, you’ll com­plete our online application!

The appli­ca­tion will ask you ques­tions about the home and your finances and takes less than 20 min­utes to com­plete. As soon as you’ve fin­ished the appli­ca­tion we’ll review your request for instant approval. If your appli­ca­tion is approved online, we’ll ask you for a deposit to cov­er the cost of the appraisal on your home so that we can begin to process your request imme­di­ate­ly. This deposit will be cred­it­ed towards your clos­ing fees at closing.
After com­plet­ing your appli­ca­tion, a Loan Offi­cer will con­tact you to intro­duce him­self or her­self and to answer any ques­tions you may have. Your Loan Offi­cer is a mort­gage expert and will pro­vide help and guid­ance along the way. If your request was­n’t approved online, he or she will ask you for any infor­ma­tion required to make a deci­sion about your loan.
If you are pur­chas­ing a new home, the Loan Offi­cer will also con­tact the Real Estate Bro­ker or the sell­er so that they’ll know whom to con­tact with questions.

We’ll send you an appli­ca­tion pack­age and pre­pare your loan for closing.

The appli­ca­tion pack­age will be sent to you and will con­tain papers for you to sign and a list of items we’ll need to ver­i­fy the infor­ma­tion you pro­vid­ed about your finances dur­ing the online application.

We’ll order the appraisal from a licensed apprais­er who is famil­iar with home val­ues in your area. Depend­ing on your finances and the loan amount request­ed, dif­fer­ent types of appraisals are used. Some­times the apprais­er will need to view the home. Some­times they are able to do their eval­u­a­tion from the street.

Title insur­ance will be nec­es­sary. If you’re pur­chas­ing a home, we’ll work with the real estate bro­ker or sell­er to ensure the title work is ordered as soon as pos­si­ble. If you are refi­nanc­ing we’ll take care of order­ing the title work for you. We’ll use the title insur­ance to con­firm the legal sta­tus of your prop­er­ty and to pre­pare the clos­ing documents.
We’ll con­tact you to coor­di­nate your clos­ing date.

After we received the appli­ca­tion pack­age back from you and the appraisal and title work, we’ll con­tact you to sched­ule your loan clos­ing. If you are pur­chas­ing a home, we’ll also sched­ule the clos­ing with the real estate bro­ker and the seller.

The clos­ing will take place at the office of a title com­pa­ny or attor­ney in your area who will act as our agent. A few days before clos­ing, your Loan Offi­cer will con­tact you to walk through the final infor­ma­tion so that there won’t be any sur­pris­es at closing.

That’s all there is to it! You’re on your way to the most con­ve­nient home loan ever!

A 15-year fixed rate mort­gage gives you the abil­i­ty to own your home free and clear in 15 years. And while the month­ly pay­ments are some­what high­er than a 30-year loan, the inter­est rate on the 15-year mort­gage is usu­al­ly a lit­tle low­er. You’ll also pay less than half of the total inter­est cost of the tra­di­tion­al 30-year mortgage. 

How­ev­er, if you can’t afford the high­er month­ly pay­ment of a 15-year mort­gage, don’t feel alone. Many bor­row­ers find the high­er pay­ment out of reach and choose a 30-year mort­gage. It still makes sense to use a 30-year mort­gage for most people. 

Who should con­sid­er a 15-year mortgage?

The 15-year fixed rate mort­gage is most pop­u­lar among young home­buy­ers with suf­fi­cient income to meet the high­er month­ly pay­ments to pay off the house before their chil­dren start col­lege. They own more of their home faster with this kind of mort­gage, and can begin to con­sid­er the cost of high­er edu­ca­tion for their chil­dren with­out hav­ing a mort­gage pay­ment to make as well. Oth­er home­buy­ers, who are more estab­lished in their careers, have high­er high­er incomes, and whose desire is to own their homes before they retire, may also pre­fer this mortgage. 

Advan­tages and Dis­ad­van­tages of a 15-year mortgage

The 15-year fixed rate mort­gage offers two big advan­tages for most borrowers:

• You own your home in half the time it would take with a tra­di­tion­al 30-year mortgage
• You save more than half the amount of inter­est of a 30-year mort­gage. Lenders usu­al­ly offer this mort­gage at a slight­ly low­er inter­est rate than with 30-year loans. 

Dis­ad­van­tages of a 15-year fixed rate mortgage:

• The month­ly pay­ments are rough­ly 10 to 15% high­er per month than a 30-year loan
• Because you’ll pay less in inter­est on the 15-year mort­gage, you won’t have the max­i­mum mort­gage inter­est tax deduc­tion possible. 

An adjustable rate mort­gage, or an “ARM” as they are com­mon­ly called, is a loan type that offers a low­er ini­tial inter­est rate than most fixed rate loans. The trade off is that the inter­est rate can change peri­od­i­cal­ly, usu­al­ly in rela­tion to an index, and the month­ly pay­ment will go up or down accordingly. 

Against the advan­tage of the low­er pay­ment at the begin­ning of the loan, you should weigh the risk that an increase in inter­est rates would lead to high­er month­ly pay­ments in the future. 

For many peo­ple in a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tions, an ARM is the right mort­gage choice, par­tic­u­lar­ly if your income is like­ly to increase in the future or if you only plan on being in the home for three to five years. 

A home loan often involves many fees, such as the appraisal fee, title charges, clos­ing fees, and state or local tax­es. These fees vary from state to state and also from lender to lender. Any lender should be able to give you an esti­mate of their fees, but it is more dif­fi­cult to tell which lenders have done their home­work and are pro­vid­ing a com­plete and accu­rate esti­mate. We take quotes very seri­ous­ly. We’ve com­plet­ed the research nec­es­sary to make sure the our fee quotes are accu­rate to the city level. 

To assist you in eval­u­at­ing our fees, we’ve grouped them as follows:

Third Par­ty Fees:

Fees that we con­sid­er third par­ty fees include the appraisal fee, the cred­it report fee, the set­tle­ment or clos­ing fee, the sur­vey fee, tax ser­vice fees, title insur­ance fees, flood cer­ti­fi­ca­tion fees, and courier/mailing fees. 

Third par­ty fees are fees that we’ll col­lect and pass on to the per­son who actu­al­ly per­formed the ser­vice. For exam­ple, an apprais­er is paid the appraisal fee, a cred­it bureau is paid the cred­it report fee, and an attor­ney is paid the title insur­ance fees. 

Typ­i­cal­ly, you’ll see some minor vari­ances in third par­ty fees from lender to lender since a lender may have nego­ti­ate a spe­cial charge from a provider they use often or choose a provider that offers nation­wide cov­er­age at a flat rate. You may also see that some lenders absorb minor third par­ty fees such as the flood cer­ti­fi­ca­tion fee, the tax ser­vice fee, the courier/mailing fee. 

Tax­es and Oth­er Unavoidables:

Fees that we con­sid­er to be tax­es and oth­er unavoid­ables include: State/Local Tax­es and record­ing fees. These fees will most like­ly have to be paid regard­less of the lender you choose. If some lenders don’t quote you fees that include tax­es and oth­er unavoid­able fees, don’t assume that you won’t have to pay it. It prob­a­bly means that the lender who does­n’t tell you about the fee has­n’t done the research necce­sary to pro­vide accu­rate clos­ing costs. 

Lender Fees:

Fees such as points, doc­u­ment prepa­ra­tion fees, and loan pro­cess­ing fees are retained by the lender and are used to pro­vide you with the low­est rates possible. 

This is the cat­e­go­ry of fees that you should com­pare very close­ly from lender to lender before mak­ing a decision. 

Required Advances:

You may be asked to pre­pay some items at clos­ing that will actu­al­ly be due in the future. These fees are some­times referred to as pre­paid items. 

One of the most com­mon required advancers is called “per diem inter­est” or “inter­est due at clos­ing.” All of our mort­gages have pay­ment due dates of the 1st of the month. If your loan is closed any day oth­er than the first of the month, you’ll pay inter­est from the date of clos­ing through the end of the month. 

If an escrow or impound account will be estab­lished, you will need to make an ini­tial deposit into the escrow account at clos­ing so that suf­fi­cient funds are avail­able to pay the bills when they become due. 

If your loan requres mort­gage insur­ance, up to two months of the mort­gage insur­ance will be col­lect­ed at clos­ing. Whether or not you must pur­chase mortage insur­ance depends on the size of the down pay­ment you make. 

If your loan is a pur­chase, you’ll also need to pay for your first year’s home­own­er’s insur­ance pre­mi­um pri­or to clos­ing. We con­sid­er this to e a required advance. 

If you’ve ever pur­chased a home before, you may be famil­iar with the benefit:s and terms of title insur­ance. But if this is your first home loan or you are refi­nanc­ing, you may be won­der­ing why you need anoth­er insur­ance policy. 

The answer is sim­ple: the pur­chase of a home is most like­ly one of the most expen­sive and impor­tant pur­chas­es you will ever make. You, and espe­cial­ly your mort­gage lender, want to make sure your prop­er­ty is indeed yours. That no indi­vid­ual gov­ern­ment enti­ty has any right, lien, claim, or encum­ber­ance on your property. 

The func­tion of a title insur­ance com­pa­ny is to make sure your rights and inter­ests to the prop­er­ty are clear, that trans­fer of the title takes place effi­cient­ly and cor­rect­ly, and that your inter­ests as a home­buy­er are ful­ly protected. 

Title insur­ance com­pa­nies pro­vide ser­vices to buy­ers, sell­ers, real estate devel­op­ers, builders, mort­gage lenders, and oth­ers who have an inter­est in real estate trans­fer. Title com­pa­nies typ­i­cal­ly issue two types of title policies:

• Own­er’s pol­i­cy that cov­ers you, the homebuyer
• Lender’s pol­i­cy that cov­ers the lend­ing insti­tu­tion over the life of the loan. 

Both types of poli­cies are issued at the time of clos­ing for a one-time pre­mi­um, if the loan is a pur­chase. If you are refi­nanc­ing your home, you prob­a­bly already have an own­er’s pol­i­cy that was issued when you pur­chased the prop­er­ty, so we’ll only require that a lender’s pol­i­cy be issued. 

Before issu­ing a pol­i­cy, the title com­pa­ny per­forms an in-depth search of the pub­lic records to deter­mine if any­one oth­er than you has an inter­est in the prop­er­ty. The search may be per­formed by title com­pa­ny per­son­nel using either pub­lic records or, more like­ly, the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the com­pa­ny’s own title plant. 

After a thor­ough exam­i­na­tion of the records, any title prob­lems are usu­al­ly found and can be cleared up pri­or to your pur­chase of the prop­er­ty. Once a title pol­i­cy is issued, if any claim cov­ered under your pol­i­cy is ever filed against your prop­er­ty, the title com­pa­ny will pay the legal fees involved in the defense of your rights. They are also respon­si­ble to cov­er loss­es aris­ing from a valid claim. This pro­tec­tion remains in effect as long as you or your heirs own the property. 

The fact that title com­pa­nies try to elim­i­nate risks before they devel­op makes the title insur­ance sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from oth­er types of insur­ance. Most forms of insur­ance assume risks by pro­vid­ing finan­cial pro­tec­tion through a pool­ing of risks for loss­es aris­ing from an unfore­seen future event, say a fire, acci­dent, or theft. On the oth­er hand, the pur­pose of title insur­ance is to elim­i­nate risks and pre­vent loss­es caused by defects in title that may have hap­pened in the past. 

This risk elim­i­na­tion has ben­e­fits to both the home­buy­er and the title com­pa­ny. It min­i­mizes the chances that adverse claims might be raised, there­by reduc­ing the num­ber of claims that have to be defend­ed or sat­is­fied. This keeps costs down for the title com­pa­ny and pre­mi­ums low for the homebuyer.