patrick.net

never pay fees or points to REFI.
Roll the fees into the loan if you can and its worth it.

The reason is you are gonna REFI every year forever until rates hit a half a percent - then .25% loans. Its gonna be weirdville until the wheels come off and we start over with 18% int rates. Not sure what that looks like.

The dream of you sitting with a 3% mortgage for 30 years laughing at all the suckers with 8% mortages for the whole 30 years will never happen. Instead we all get lower rates forerver. From 1980 to now rates are a staggered down line. Dont bet on that trend reversing soon.

I'm also thinking mortgage rates are going to keep going down. Why do you think 3% is coming soon?

YesYNot says

I'm also thinking mortgage rates are going to keep going down. Why do you think 3% is coming soon?

Well partly because of this:
"Fed extends 'Twist' program to drive rates lower"

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-fed-twist-20120620,0,3063925.story

Even if my home loses another $10K when it's appraised.. I bought with an original appraisal of $435K at a price of $400K.

So I have some buffer room..to maintain the proper equity ratio... The tricky part is PMI keeps rising.. So i want to maintain my 15% equity PMI price point. (really hope to get rid of it altogether in 3 years)

I have a feeling if rates go down much below 3% it's because home prices took another big hit in REAL terms.

Home prices have been in reality falling like a ROCK in terms of monthly financed payments since 2009... That I will give all the Bears...

Even though the line looks fairly flat.. or a small dip from 2009-2012...

If you bought a home and didn't refi in 2009... for the same price you bought in 2012... The person who bought in 2009 would have as much as $500 more in monthly payments on a $400K home than someone who just bought the same home for the SAME 2009 price.

Monthly nut on a mortgage has been falling fairly dramatically for 3 years now.

PockyClipsNow says

never pay fees or points to REFI.
Roll the fees into the loan if you can and its worth it.

We didn't have to roll any fees into our loan the last REFI even!

The sheer amount of equity you are paying on a 30 year mortgage financed at below 3% rates is pretty astonishing.

Sure your probably losing equity every year rates are dropping..

But let's say you mortgage $350K... at 2.5% 30 year fixed rate (a possibility in a year or two).

Your monthly payment is : $1382 and your paying $661 in equity each month.

So that's $721 a month of interest... add in property taxes, pmi and insurance.

And you're probably paying around $1200 total costs excluding equity payments and excluding mortgage interest deduction.

I don't see many homes that would require a $350K mortgage that would rent for even close to $1200 a month. Most homes that require that large of a mortgage would rent for $2000+ a month.

Interest rates falling to sub-3% range really complicates buy vs. rent scenarios.

wait for rates to be -10%!
I've seen articles that claiming that they'll be an extra $1+ trillion demand for Treasuries due to Dodd-Frank; there are collateral requirements for the derivatives clearinghouse set up by the legislation. We've already seen effective negative yields on short term bonds -- welcome to deflation nation.

OK. I was just reading about operation twist. Also, Europe instabilities are likely to drive rates down too, so I'm thinking that they will go down this summer for that reason as well. 3% is pretty low though.

Right now on amerisave for my region, the advertise 3.25, but I'd have to pay $8K to get it. For a break even refinance (they give back about $1500 to pay for appraisal and other fees), the rate is 4.0%. It used to be 3.875%. That is non-fha.

The banksters are truly desperate.

The debt serfs can't take on enough new debt to keep the game going.

Only question, can TPTB hold back the implosion until after the election?

I don't know what the servicers get to charge, but it should be pretty small. Setting up a computer system to collect payments is basically free. A 1/4 point service fee on a $200K loan would be $500 / yr or $42 per payment. For that rate, the 'service' ought to include more than taking a payment.