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very depressing news; do we take house off the market???
Topic Started: Apr 2 2008, 09:58 AM (1,215 Views)
KaliTude
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Thomas H. Cruise!
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MayaTy02
Apr 4 2008, 06:21 AM
well the problem with refinancing is that you can't refinance if you're house is on the market currently or within 6 months...or so I've been told. We were planning on taking it off the market in July/August and then refinancing 6 months later before the next adjustment.

Where exactly did you hear that? From your bank? From some realturd?

We refinanced our house while it was still on the market. We decided to keep the house so locked in a 30 year fixed.

The problem with waiting to refinance is if your house continues to lose value (not in your own mind or the mind of a realturd, BUT in the mind of the bank and bank's appraiser) you may not get the best rate. Those ultra low rates with no points and no fees etc are reserved for those with perfect credit, good income and a low debt to value ratio. When I refinanced we still had 30% equity in the home. The lenders told me the minute it falls below 20% in the mind of the bank those rates shoot up.

Once again with now rapidly rising unemployment, which you are unfortunately now intimately aware of, banks are going to be much tighter in their lending standards. And all this bailout BS is only going to make is worse for people like you who do everything "right". The banks have to mitigate risk and make up for losses somewhere, and it will be from people who can pay.
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MayaTy02
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KaliTude
Apr 4 2008, 06:38 AM
MayaTy02
Apr 4 2008, 06:21 AM
well the problem with refinancing is that you can't refinance if you're house is on the market currently or within 6 months...or so I've been told. We were planning on taking it off the market in July/August and then refinancing 6 months later before the next adjustment.

Where exactly did you hear that? From your bank? From some realturd?

We refinanced our house while it was still on the market. We decided to keep the house so locked in a 30 year fixed.

The problem with waiting to refinance is if your house continues to lose value (not in your own mind or the mind of a realturd, BUT in the mind of the bank and bank's appraiser) you may not get the best rate. Those ultra low rates with no points and no fees etc are reserved for those with perfect credit, good income and a low debt to value ratio. When I refinanced we still had 30% equity in the home. The lenders told me the minute it falls below 20% in the mind of the bank those rates shoot up.

Once again with now rapidly rising unemployment, which you are unfortunately now intimately aware of, banks are going to be much tighter in their lending standards. And all this bailout BS is only going to make is worse for people like you who do everything "right". The banks have to mitigate risk and make up for losses somewhere, and it will be from people who can pay.

actually it was my mortgage broker and bank where we have a home equity loan that told me that. I need to call our current mortgage company...getting on the phone now....oops got VM.

Our rate actually *should* not go up in June based on what I'm able to calculate so I am not so panicked about refinancing right now, also he is going to be technically unemployed on 4/24 so can we still refinance? I dunnooooo

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KaliTude
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Thomas H. Cruise!
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So you have a first and second HELOC? I am certainly not advocating that you should refinance necessarily. If the HELOC isn't a big balance I would personally NOT refinance or roll that into one loan. The HELOC loan IS influenced by prime, which is 3% over the FED rate, which is not going up any time soon and might go down. I don't think you can get a fixed rate that will beat that rate.

You want to look at the first mortgage and decide whether or not that one is worth refinancing to get a fixed 30 year rate. What it sounds like is it might not. Just make sure to really know the terms. If you can lower your rate and payments on that loan and think you might be in the house longer than you want, then refinance. If not, then don't.

There are really great online calculators as well, you just punch in the numbers and they tell you how long it will take you to break even.
I like this one
http://www.bankrate.com/brm/calc_vml/refi/refi.asp
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KaliTude
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Thomas H. Cruise!
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Sorry, just wanted to add that you should know the terms of that HELOC. We had one that I stupidly let my husband open with the aid of a mortgage broker, HUGE mistake. Even though she was a client of his, she royally screwed us. She signed us up for basically a "sub-prime" HELOC, us with good verifiable income and 800 credit scores. When I found out I was livid.

Part of this mortgage mess was brokers making more money sticking people into sub-prime loans when they should not have. The brokers made more money. The loan was prime plus 1%, which was really high. It had pre-payment penalties. I rolled it into a decent HELOC at prime minus .5% and paid the $1000 penalty just to get away from it.

So do your own homework. A good HELOC should be prime MINUS .5% or more.
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Sing Mia Song
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MayaTy, my brother (the one who lives in Ridgefield) just got a job after a year. He's in a very niche profession, though, so it wasn't unheard of for him. But it's so hard staying motivated!

Tell me more about what DH does/has done, and I'll check with John and see if he knows of any possibilities.
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3Bays
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@KaliTude:

A question for you...

I went on that awesome website to check out what our healtcare costs would be...my DH is retiring in July, and we estimate our medical (with the SAME company...United Healthcare...) when it's rolled over from the State (DH is a State Employee) would be someplace around 1200/mo...but, when I chose the SAME plan (at least I believe it is...I may have to do some fine print reviews) from their quote generator, the quote was $455!

Now: do you know if those quotes are PER PERSON or for the Primary and Spouse? The box to the right says that it's supposedly a quote for my DH and me, along with our ages and the name of the plan chosen. But, I cannot find anything which tells me SPECIFICALLY if it's per person or for both of us...?

I have NO idea why carrying our own plan would be so much cheaper than a State sponsored plan...?

Now, there is one other factor: I do have ongoing physical health issues, so that may be what is causing the huge difference. But still...THAT much difference?

Anyhoo...if you (or anyone else here) can enlighten me, I'd really appreciate it. We will shortly be selecting all our "bennies" for rollover from the State for his actual retirement (July).

Thanks, Kali and all who have insights and experience!
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KaliTude
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3Bays, in your situation I would just do your footwork. Arm yourself with online quotes from multiple carriers and then start calling. After my experiences with both insurance and mortgage products, I no longer go with "brokers" I go to the source.

I think as you have seen health care costs vary wildly between government programs and different private programs. You have to shop around and get things in writing.
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MayaTy02
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as it happens, i am definitely NOT able to refinance while the house is on the market. I just spoke to my current mortgage holder and they were going to offer to convert to a different ARM (5 or 7/1) and as soon as they heard it was on the market, all bets were off. They agreed too that I'll be better off just letting it adjust this year and refinancing before the next adjustment in 6/09.

My HELOC has dropped big time and is a normal every day HELOC, though my bank, not broker.

SingMiaSong: I forgot you had a brother who lives here :) My husband is currently "Editor-in-Chief" for a multi-billion dollar software firm. He writes newsletters and success stories etc for their customers and works on marketing communications and the website. So net net, he's a writer/editor as well as a novelist and he is really talented with writing/editing etc. His niche is in the IT industry but that's only because he fell into it, he's about the least technical person I know :)

Thanks for listening all...it's great to be able to vent my stress to you all :)

PS Just I finally got to ride today for the first time in 2 weeks :) yeah!
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KaliTude
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Bummer. My lender had no problem refinancing. Saved me 1% on the interest rate and about $150 a month (50k off the loan). It's one of the reasons we decided to keep the house.
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mareseatoats
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MayaTy, my guess is that you also wouldn't have been able to refinance while your husband is about to become unemployed. Part of the easy lending mess is the number of people who lied about their employment -- nobody was checking up. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way, it will be much harder to qualify for credit of any kind.
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