So now that its been over a year since we closed on the house (so crazy!), we can finally refinance our mortgage (the reason we were told we should wait a year is so we could get the house reappraised as the original appraisal is in effect for a year).
Even with interest rates shooting up, it made sense for us to look into it because we could get rid of that pesky mortgage insurance and move into a regular old conforming loan. Our house has well over 20% equity in it.
Exactly two days before the one year anniversary of our closing date, I email my current lender and ask to start the refinance process. I also tell him we want to possibly take some cash out, confident that the appraisal is going to be higher than it was originally. The real estate landscape this last year in Bushwick had been on fire.
After taking updated documents from me (bank statements, w2’s, etc), he comes back with a rate of 4.75%, which, even after taking out the mortgage insurance, puts us almost back where we started. He says the rate is high because we want to take cash out and we have a 2-family. Now we would just be paying more interest to the bank instead of mortgage insurance. It’s amazing what half of percent can do when hundreds of thousands of dollars are involved.
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