Mortgages: Purchasing Power versus Conservatism

We’ve been thinking a lot about mortgages lately. Something that jumps out at us is just how much of an opportunity the combination of declining mortgage rates and falling home prices has created for buyers. Interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages were around 6% during the early and mid-2000s when we bought our house. Those same loans are now available for interest rates of 4% or less, and 15-year fixed mortgages are available for just

The Appraiser is Coming!

We are refinancing our home. Again. For the third time in eight years of ownership. Does that tell you anything about what mortgage rates have been doing? Dropping, dropping, dropping. Oh yeah, and also that we have no intention of moving. In 2004 we started with a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. In 2005 we refinanced to another 30-year mortgage because we originally had a NINJA loan (No Income, No Job or Asset- hey, we were

Mortgage Rates and The Fed

This afternoon the Federal Reserve announced the next phase of their strategy to stimulate the economy. Broadly referred to as Quantitative Easing 2, the plan involves printing a whole lot of money in order to buy long-term US Treasury Bonds in the markets. The Fed’s big picture goal is to reduce unemployment, and hopes that injecting more money into the economy will encourage businesses to begin taking risks to expand their operations (hire more workers),

Courant Companion: A Refi Bonanza

Today’s front page Courant article gives another view of the refinancing opportunity. They highlight a homeowner who is moving from a 30 year to 15 year mortgage, illustrating the significant amount of interest they can save by knocking 8 years off the total term of the loan. The story provides another great example of the line of thinking and analysis we did when working through our refinancing process. And kudos to the homeowner for aspiring

Refinancing Our House- Journey Underway

Last week I wrote a post about trying to refinance our house. We’re well underway at this point and hope to close in the next 45 days or so, as long as everything goes as planned. All four lenders that I initially called responded quickly to the voicemails I left them. Three were brokers that have several banks available to them and one was a local credit union. They all said that they’re getting lots