HOME LOAN RATES AND FEES

None of the loan pro­grams we offer have pre­pay­ment penal­ties. You can pay off your mort­gage at any time with no addi­tion­al charges. 

Inter­est rates fluc­tu­ate based on a vari­ety of fac­tors, includ­ing infla­tion, the pace of eco­nom­ic growth and Fed­er­al Reserve Policy. 

Over time, infla­tion has the largest influ­ence on the lev­el of inter­est rates. A mod­est rate of infla­tion will almost always lead to low inter­est rates, while con­cerns about ris­ing infla­tion nor­mal­ly cause inter­est rates to increase. 

Our nation’s cen­tral bank, the Fed­er­al Reserve, imple­ments poli­cies designed to keep infla­tion and inter­est rates rel­a­tive­ly low and stable. 

There’s no cost at all for com­plet­ing our appli­ca­tion. After your loan is approved, you can decide whether you want to pay the appli­ca­tion deposit to cov­er the cost of the appraisal and final cred­it report so you can lock in an inter­est rate and we can begin to process your request. 

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. 

Mort­gage inter­est rate move­ments are as hard to pre­dict as the stock mar­ket and no one can real­ly know for cer­tain whether they’ll go up or down. 

If you have a hunch that rates are on an upward trend then you’ll want to con­sid­er lock­ing the rate as soon as you are able. 

Before you decide to lock, make sure that your loan can close with­in the lock peri­od. It won’t do any good to lock your rate if you can’t close dur­ing the rate lock period. 

If you’re pur­chas­ing a home, review your con­tract for the esti­mat­ed clos­ing date to help you choose the right rate lock period. 

If you are refi­nanc­ing, in most cas­es, your loan could close with­in 30 days. How­ev­er, if you have any sec­ondary financ­ing on the home that won’t be paid off, allow some extra time since we’ll need to con­tact that lender to get their permission. 

If you think rates might drop while your loan is being processed, take a risk and let your rate “float” instead of lock­ing. After you apply, you can lock in by con­tact­ing your Loan Officer. 

Points are con­sid­ered a form of inter­est. Each point is equal to one per­cent of the loan amount. Uou pay them up front at your loan clos­ing in exchange for a low­er inter­est rate over the life of your loan. This means more mon­ey will be required at clos­ing. How­ev­er, you will have low­er month­ly pay­ments over the term of your loan. 

To deter­mine whether it makes sense for you to pay points, you should com­pare the cost of the points to the month­ly pay­ment sav­ings cre­at­ed by the low­er inter­est rate. 

Divide the total cost of the points by the sav­ings each month. This gives you the num­ber of pay­ments you’ll need to make before you actu­al­ly start sav­ing mon­ey by pay­ing points. 

If the num­ber of months it will take to start sav­ing mon­ey is longer than you plan on hav­ing this mort­gage, you should con­sid­er the loan pro­gram option that does­n’t require points to be paid. 

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. 

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. 

First of all, let’s make sure we mean the same thing when we dis­cuss “mort­gage insur­ance.” Mort­gage insur­ance should not be con­fused with mort­gage life insur­ance, which is designed to pay off a mort­gage in the event of a bor­row­er’s death. Mort­gage insur­ance makes it pos­si­ble for you to buy a home with less than a 20% down pay­ment by pro­tect­ing the lender against the addi­tion­al risk asso­ci­at­ed with low down pay­ment lend­ing. Low down pay­ment mort­gages are becom­ing more and more pop­u­lar, and by pur­chas­ing mort­gage insur­ance, lenders are more com­fort­able with down pay­ments as low as 3–5% of the home­’s val­ue. It also pro­vides you with the abil­i­ty to by a more expen­sive home than might be pos­si­ble if a 20% down pay­ment were required. 

The mort­gage insur­ance pre­mi­um is based on loan to val­ue ratio, type of loan, and amount cov­er­age required by the lender. Usu­al­ly, the pre­mi­um is includ­ed in your month­ly pay­ment and one to two months of the pre­mi­um is col­lect­ed as a required advance at closing. 

It may be pos­si­ble to can­cel pri­vate mort­gage insur­ance at some point, such as when your loan bal­ance is reduced to a cer­tain amount (below 75–80% of the prop­er­ty val­ue). Recent Fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion requires auto­mat­ic ter­mi­na­tion of mort­gage insur­ance for many bor­row­ers when their loan bal­ance has been amor­tized down to 78% or the orig­i­nal prop­er­ty value. 

Gen­er­al Statement:

The inter­est rate mar­ket is sub­ject to move­ments with­out advance notice. Lock­ing in a rate pro­tects you from the time your lock is con­firmed to the day that your lock peri­od expires. 

Lock-In Agree­ment:

A lock is an agree­ment by the bor­row­er and the lender that spec­i­fies the num­ber of days for which a loan’s inter­est rate and points are guar­an­teed. Should the inter­est rate rise dur­ing that peri­od, we are oblig­at­ed to hon­or the com­mit­ted rate. Should the inter­est rate fall dur­ing that peri­od, the bor­row­er must hon­or the lock. 

When Can I Lock?

Online rate locks are not avail­able. Please con­tact us at 1–888-499-FIRE to dis­cuss your rate lock options. 

Fees:

We do not charge a fee for lock­ing your inter­est rate. 

Lock Peri­od:

We cur­rent­ly offer a 60 day lock-in peri­od on our site. This means your loan must close and dis­burse with­in this num­ber of days from the day your lock is con­firmed by us. 

Lock Changes:

Once we accept your lock, your loan is com­mit­ted into a sec­ondary mar­ket trans­ac­tion. There­fore, we are not able to rene­go­ti­ate lock committments. 

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. 

You can lock in your inter­est rate and points as soon as your loan is approved and you pay the appli­ca­tion deposit to cov­er the cost of your appraisal and final cred­it report. 

The appli­ca­tion deposit is not anoth­er fee, it’s actu­al­ly just the appraisal cost esti­mate and will be cred­it­ed to the actu­al appraisal cost at your closing. 

If you com­plete your appli­ca­tion today, and your request is approved online, you’ll have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pay the appli­ca­tion deposit via cred­it card and can lock in your rate immediately. 

If we need to review your infor­ma­tion before pro­vid­ing your loan approval, a Loan Offi­cer will con­tact you and you’ll have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to lock your rate and fees then.