Refinancing Our House- Journey Completed

Refi SuccessLike clockwork, about 45 days after our refinancing journey started, this morning it ended. We’ve officially and successfully purchased our house for the third time. You see, we bought it in 2004, refinanced in 2005 to a lower rate and refinanced again to an even lower rate and a 15-year mortgage today. The message? We must REALLY like this place.

All in all, the process was pretty painless and easy. First, we had plenty of equity in the house based on the initial down payment we made the first time we purchased and the fact that we’ve done improvements to the home since we’ve owned it. Some folks trying to refinance now are finding that they don’t have enough equity in their homes, making it impossible to go through the process and get a lower interest rate. Second, Kyle is a master document keeper/organizer, so he had all of the paperwork we needed to submit at his fingertips. (Don’t ask me where it is, I have no idea, he’s the obsessive/compulsive about that stuff). Finally, we had the cash available to close. It was a little over $7,000 out of pocket to cover the lender charges, escrows for taxes and insurance, and the title insurance fees. We will get a good chunk of that back when Wells Fargo releases our previously escrowed tax and insurance payments for the mortgage that was just released as we refinanced. Still, we had to have cash money available today to make this all happen.

As we went over the HUD statement with our closing attorney I asked him what he thought about the fees that we were charged. Were they in line with all of the other refis that he’s closing? He mentioned that he felt they were fair and comparable to two other lenders that I know many people use. He also mentioned that our rate was very competitive. That of course made me feel good.

Now, what next? Well, I don’t expect that we’ll be refinancing any time again before the mortgage is paid off in the next 15 years. That loan was really cheap at 3.75% and I don’t think we’ll ever see anything substantially lower than that which would encourage us to refinance again. So we’ll stay put and pay this sucker off. Because we REALLY like this place.

4 thoughts on “Refinancing Our House- Journey Completed

  1. Congratulations on your latest capital venture to save yourself interest not to be paid out.

    Any bets that 15yr fixed will hit 3.0% next spring?

  2. I’d be a little surprised if it went quite that low- but its certainly in the realm of possibility – If it does – that will create some opportunities to hit a shorter term mortgage for those in 30 years at 5-6%

Comments are closed.