Mortgage Price Quotes
Rates and points quoted by loan providers. You cannot safely assume that mortgage price quotes are always timely, niche-adjusted, complete, or reliable. Timeliness: Most mortgage lenders change their prices daily, generally in the morning after secondary markets open, and sometimes they will change them during the day as well. This is a major problem for shoppers using traditional distribution channels, since prices collected from lender 1 on Monday and from lender 2 on Tuesday will not be comparable if the market has changed in the meantime. Niche-Adjusted: Most mortgage price quotes are based on the most favorable assumptions possible about your niche. Niche-adjusted prices are available from a loan officer by volunteering the information needed to determine the correct price. Usually, the loan officer will ask you to fill out an application in the process, which makes it difficult to shop. The easier way to shop niche-adjusted prices is at Web sites that offer a 'customized' price. To receive it, you must first fill out a form that provides the required information about your deal, but you don't have to apply. Multiple Web sites can be shopped in one sitting. Completeness: Most price quotes consist of rate and points only. They omit fixed-dollar fees, and on ARMs they also omit features that affect the ARM rate after the initial rate period ends. Reliability: A reliable price quote is one that, assuming the market does not change, the loan provider intends to honor when you lock. Some loan providers offer low-ball quotes they have no intention of honoring. The objective is to rope you in. They figure that once you are in the application process, they have a good chance of landing you as a borrower. If you are purchasing a house, the cost of terminating the process with one loan provider and starting again with another becomes increasingly high as you move toward the home closing date. Your bargaining power recedes with the passage of time.
Popular Mortgage Terms
The total cash required of the home buyer/borrower to close the purchase plus loan transaction or the loan transaction on a refinance. Required cash includes the down payment, points and ...
A mortgage on which all settlement costs except per diem interest and escrows are paid by the lender and/or the home seller. A no-cost mortgage should be distinguished from a ...
The period used to calculate the monthly mortgage payment. The term is usually but not always the same as the maturity, which is the period over which the loan balance must be paid in ...
A second mortgage offered at preferential (subsidized) terms to those who qualify. For example, a labor union may offer members who are first-time home buyers a silent second to finance ...
A contract provision that adjusts the payment on an ARM periodically to make it fully amortizing. ...
Having the builder borrow the money needed for construction. ...
The form that lists the settlement charges the borrower must pay at closing, which the lender is obliged to provide the borrower within three business days of receiving the loan application. ...
Also called variable or flexible rate mortgage, an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) is a mortgage where the interest rate is not constant, but changes over time by the mortgage lender. ...
To define a home equity line of credit, we can also take a look at how credit cards work. Similarly to credit cards, home equity lines of credit are sources of funds that can be accessed ...
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