Tag Archive for: PMI

You Don’t Need 20% Down for a Good Mortgage

For many homeowners, saving money for a large down payment can take years. Add to that rising house prices and discouragement can set in, especially if house prices are rising faster than you can save. But you don’t need to put 20% down on a new home to get a good mortgage. In fact, putting […]

How to Cancel PMI and Lower Your Monthly Mortgage Payment

Private mortgage insurance (PMI) is typically required for homeowners who put less than 20% down toward their home loan. In general, private mortgage insurance (PMI) is 0.5 – 1.5% of the total loan amount and is tacked onto the monthly mortgage payment. It can easily add a few hundred dollars to your mortgage payment every […]

Closing Costs: What Your Lender Can Control and What Your Lender Can’t

When consumers start talking about mortgage loans, the two most important topics are almost always the prevailing interest rate for the loan program they’ve chosen and closing costs. Yes, there certainly are other considerations but in most every instance these two items get the most attention, and rightly so. After all, the interest rate on […]

What Are the Differences: Jumbo Loan vs. Conforming

Okay, the main difference between a conforming home loan and a jumbo loan is simply the loan amount. Conforming loans are labeled conforming because they conform to guidelines set by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. For most parts of the country the maximum loan amount to still be considered a conforming loan is $484,350. Anything […]

Private Mortgage Insurance: Can I Cancel It?

It used to be that when someone applied for a conventional loan, the down payment required could be as much as 20 or even 30 percent or more. That kept many buyers away from homeownership simply because they couldn’t save up enough for a down payment. Private mortgage insurance began as a way to make […]

What Is Mortgage Insurance?

If you’re doing some research on mortgage loans and searching for information such as down payments, closing costs and interest rates, at some point you’ll run across mortgage insurance (also called PMI). It might sound like an insurance policy that makes the mortgage payments should someone be temporarily unemployed or otherwise unable to make the […]

Refinancing Multiple Mortgages Into One

Can refinancing your mortgage save you money? It’s fairly common for homeowners to have not one but two or more mortgages filed against the property. For some, they actually took out two loans at the time of purchase, a first and a second mortgage. When we structure such a loan for buyers, it’s to avoid […]