Article Surfing Archive

Refinancing Your Home

You may want to refinance your home for several reasons. The biggest reason that people refinance their homes is to save money.

If you qualify for a lower rate you could lock in that lower mortgage rate and stretch out the payments so that every month you are paying less to live in your home than before. Once you decide to refinance your home, you will undoubtedly be confronted with a variety of choices as to what sort of new loan you can get.

One tactic people use is to shop the rate around to several banks to see what the best deal is for them. Refinancing your mortgage can certainly free up a lot of capital but you have to be careful. Some unscrupulous lenders may advertise a lower rate, but once you work out the math the lender may have added so many points and fees to your refinancing that you are actually paying more than some of the other advertised rates.

When you refinance your mortgage, you may be able to substantially reduce your monthly payments, especially when we are in a low interest rate environment like we are today. You may have bought your home in times of relatively high mortgage rates and therefore are locked into higher payments than you should be. These days, mortgage rates have been hovering around 6% and lower for a while. If you want to refinance your home and cut your monthly payment, now may be the best time to do it. Mortgage rates rarely stay the same for long time periods.

Refinancing Your Home to Free Up Money for Other Purposes

Many people who are deeply in credit card debt or who have recently filed for bankruptcy may want to refinance their homes in order to free up some of their home equity and pay off their other debts. This can be a good strategy if the other debts are high interest rate debts. It's not too hard to figure out that paying off debts that are charging you 20% per year with debt that is only costing you 6% a year might be a good deal.

People who refinance their homes often come out better than before, but as usual it pays to shop around. Find the best deal your can for your mortgage and your may be able to have a lot of spare money every month.