LAME.

[devinam]

we're refinancing our house, and just got the verdict back from the appraiser. It shouldn't surprise me, but we fall in the category of most people, that our house is now worth less than when we bought it. only 5k less, but still...it's so lame. I don't know exactly what that does to our refinance process, i still need to find that out. but i would

Comments

[tannyho]

man, I would have thought that 4 years would have at least let you break even... that is lame.

Probably b/c you owe less than the house is worth you'll re-fi just fine-- you'll be borrowing less than the value of the house, so the bank has all the collateral they want/need and that makes them happy. Unless you were planning on adding a line of credit or something, that could change things.

[devinam]

we currently have 2 mortgages, we did an 80/15/5 (we had a 5% down payment), so we didn't have to pay mortgage insurance. the 15% loan is at 7.75%, and the 80% loan is at 5.75%. we were hoping to roll both of those into one with a lower interest rate (we were able to lock in 4.75%, i think...), and do a 15 yr mortage, and it was going to work out really well. (i think we owe about 200k still) HOWEVER...the lenders will only loan 75% of the value of the house, given today's climate. so we can basically refinance the big loan, and barely touch the small loan with the higher percent. (which is the one we most wanted to get rid of). :( we looked at numbers last night, and it's still worth it, in the long run, it's just not working out like we had hoped, what with my unpaid maternity leave coming up, and going to nursing school next year.

[tannyho]

that is lame. is it possible (would you want to?) do a interest only loan for the lower interest loan, and pay down the higher interest one faster? Once you pay that 2nd mortgage down you could pay P&I for the original loan?

it sounds like you guys have done a lot of homework and are looking at the whole picture :)

[devinam]

really want to avoid interest only, as it just doesn't make financial sense to us. but yeah, mike's going to talk to the loan broker (who happens to be his cousin) today. it really doesn't make sense to us, to base the loan solely on a percentage of what the house is worth, not based on what we can afford to pay back. if we were applying for a loan to buy a new house, we would be cleared for more than we're cleared for with the refi. so it's just wierd to me. even using conservative figures for our ability to repay. we qualified for our current loans on just mike's salary, and now we have both our salaries, and we've both gotten substantial raises since then.

so it just doesn't make much sense. well, to us, anyways. not being lenders, i don't know the formulas and the math that goes into it. but, i guess mortgage lenders are SO wary of everyone now, regardless of well, most everything. ;)

*sigh*