What Kind of Loan Should You Get?

The Homesteader

You've just found a home in a nice neighborhood and you plan to stay there until your kids are through high school. Or maybe you're 65 and are buying your retirement home. In either case, you know you're not moving for at least a decade.

What you want: No doubt about it. In the current environment, you want a fixed-rate mortgage. Rates on a 30-year fixed-rate loan are incredibly low, and though a fixed rate still costs more than an adjustable-rate mortgage, the difference between the two is not that great. The price of stability, in other words, is relatively affordable. If your monthly cash flow permits it, you might consider a 15-year loan. The monthly payment is higher, but you pay less interest over the life of the loan.

Where to shop: Your first stop should definitely be a mortgage banker such as Countrywide Funding. Unlike mortgage brokers, with which these outfits are sometimes confused, mortgage bankers are not intermediaries between you and a lender; they are lenders. Mortgage bankers don't write a lot of adjustable-rate loans, because it's harder to package those for sale to organizations, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Thus, because mortgage bankers make their money on fixed rates, their prices tend to be the most aggressive around.

source: yahoo.com

5 big mortgage mistakes and how to avoid them

By Liz Pulliam Weston

Not fixing your credit

Mortgage brokers say they're confounded at the number of buyers who apply for a mortgage with their fingers crossed, hoping their credit will allow them to qualify for a loan.

Before you even think about applying for a mortgage, obtain copies of your credit report and your FICO credit score. Your FICO score is the three-digit number that's used in 75% of mortgage-lending decisions. You can order your FICO score on the Web for a fee of $14.95, which includes a copy of your credit report.

Doing this at least six months in advance should give you plenty of time to challenge any errors on your report and ensure that they're removed by the time you're ready to apply for a loan. You can also see the legitimate factors that are hurting your score and do something about them, such as paying off an overdue bill or paying down credit card debt.

Not looking for first-time home buyers' programs

These programs, typically sponsored by state, county or city governments, often offer better interest rates and terms than you'll find among private lenders, said mortgage consultant Diane St. James. Some are tailored for people with damaged credit, while most can help people with little saved for a down payment.

Some of these resources are listed on St. James' educational Web site, ABC Mortgage Consulting. You can also call the housing agencies for your state, county and city to see what they offer.

Not getting pre-approved for a loan

Many first-time borrowers confuse being "pre-qualified" with being "pre-approved." Pre-qualification is a pretty casual process, where a lender tells you how much money you probably can borrow based on how much money you make, how much debt you already have and how much cash you have for the down payment.

Getting pre-approval, by contrast, is a much more rigorous process and involves actually applying for a loan. You typically submit tax returns, pay stubs and other information. The lender verifies the information and checks your credit. If all goes well, the lender agrees in writing to make the loan.

In a hot or even warm real estate market, the house hunter who is only pre-qualified is a cooked goose. Home sellers and their agents give much more weight to offers being made by buyers who already have a loan lined up.

Borrowing too much money

Many people take out the biggest loan they possibly can, figuring that their incomes will eventually increase enough to make the payments comfortable. But few first-time buyers have any clear idea of how expensive homeownership can be. Not only will you shell out more for mortgage payments than you probably did for rent, but you'll also need to cover property taxes and homeowners insurance, as well as higher bills for utilities, maintenance and repairs than you faced as a renter.

Lenders are perfectly willing to let you overextend, knowing that you'll probably forgo vacations, retirement savings and new clothes for the kids rather than default on your mortgage.

"Mortgage money … is way too easy to get," said Ted Grose, president of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers. "People tend to overbuy … and that can really stress family life. It's also a formula for foreclosure."

Instead of going to the edge of affordability, consider limiting your housing costs -- mortgage payments, property taxes and homeowners insurance -- to 25% or so of your gross income. That's a much more sustainable level for most people, financial planners say, than the 33% lenders are typically willing to give you.

Not having enough cash on hand after closing

After borrowing too much, and scraping together every last dime for closing costs, many home buyers have nothing left in the bank to pay for anything unforeseen happening --and something unforeseen always happens.

"It costs so much just to move in," Grose said. "Then the water heater breaks."

Some people are so tapped out by the process, Jackson said, that they're not able to make their first mortgage payment on time. That's why "more and more lenders are requiring [borrowers have] three months' reserves after closing," Jackson said.

That's a smart idea for borrowers, anyway. Having three months' reserves, which means a fund equal to three months' worth of expenses, will help you handle the added costs of homeownership with much less stress.

Buy Instead of Renting When You Have the Down Payment

After looking at all the costs involved in buying house, you may have begun to have second thoughts: Perhaps, it is better to rent a home.

Real estate in most areas today is not a top investment compared with investment securities. "You're not going to get a 30 percent return on your house," said Steve O'Connor, senior director of residential finance at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. In the past decade, people have been advised to think of a home "as shelter not investment" O'Connor said. "Wealth accumulation is secondary."

Still, as shelter, most experts say if you can afford the down payment, it makes sense to buy your home rather than rent it. That's because you can deduct mortgage interest on income tax and build equity in your property. This is especially true when mortgage interest rates are low. Mortgage interest rates are deductible up to a $100,000 annual limit.

Example
A homeowner has a gross annual income of $40,000. The monthly mortgage payment is $1,000 on a 30-year mortgage. In the first few years, 80 percent of that payment goes to interest and is therefore tax deductible. In the 15 percent tax bracket, the homeowner saved about $375 more in taxes with the home provision versus with only a standard deduction.

Lease-Purchase Agreements
Some people take a middle road. They ease into homeownership by renting a house or condominium with an option to buy.

• Lease-purchase gives a buyer time to save for a down payment or to clean up a credit history.
• It can work in a buyer's favor in areas where real estate values are rising quickly at a rate of 10 percent a year. A buyer benefits from this appreciation because the purchase price of the home is locked in on the day the buyer signed the rent-to-own contract with the seller.
• In most agreements, the seller allows a portion of the rent to be applied towards the purchase price, which some lenders consider to be part of the down payment. The amount of rent credited could be 10 percent to 100 percent, based on your contract.
• Most rent-to-own options require some down payment to secure the agreement, which is not refundable in case the renter decides not to buy.

Homeowners who would agree to a lease-purchase option include people who have had property on the market longer than they wish or owners who had to move and want the house to be lived in. The owner benefits with rental income to help pay the carrying costs of the home, and the strong possibility of selling the house when the contract expires.

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source: Yahoo!