How to Refinance With The Lowest Mortgage Rate
Are you thinking about refinancing your home loan but aren’t sure how to get the best mortgage rate? Choosing a lender to refinance can be a confusing process and if you pick the wrong person to arrange your loan you could pay thousands of dollars too much every year. The reason this happens is that your mortgage company or broker adds commission based markup to your mortgage rate. Homeowners who learn to recognize this markup can save themselves thousands of dollars every year. Here are several tips you can use to get the best mortgage rate when refinancing your mortgage.
How is Your Mortgage Rate Marked Up?
The mortgage company or broker arranging your loan charges you an origination fee for their part in setting up your mortgage. On top of this fee the lender pays them a commission for locking and closing loans with above market mortgage rates. This fee paid by the lender is called Yield Spread Premium. Learn how to avoid it and you can save thousands of dollars every year you have a mortgage loan.
How Yield Spread Premium Works
To illustrate the commission based markup known as Yield Spread Premium here is one example. You need to borrow $250,000 to refinance your existing home loan and the broker agrees to charge you a one percent fee. You close with a 6.75% mortgage rate and pay $2,500 to the broker for loan origination. What you don’t know is that the lender actually approved you at 6.0% and the broker marked it up for the commission. In this example the lender pays your broker a $7500 bonus for overcharging you on top of the $2,500 you’ll pay at closing.
How Does Yield Spread Premium Raise Your Payments?
You might say .75 percent isn’t that much, what’s the big deal? In the previous example if you refinance with the 6.0 percent rate that you deserve your monthly payment on a 30 year mortgage would be $1,498 per month. If you agree to a 6.75 percent mortgage rate your monthly payment balloons to $1,621 per month! That’s $1,476 you’ll pay unnecessarily every year because your mortgage broker lied to you.
Refinancing Your Home Without Yield Spread Premium
Homeowners who learn to recognize this commission based markup of their mortgage rates can refinance with a wholesale mortgage rate and save thousands of dollars in finance charges. It is possible to refinance your home with a wholesale rate and only pay one percent to the broker. You can learn more about doing this yourself without paying lender junk fees.