With the market experiencing a supply glut of homes, fixed-rate mortgages are now experiencing historically low interest rates. Here are some tips to getting the best possible home mortgage available. Just remember to keep a good credit score.

Here are some tips to help you get the best possible loan.

(1) Watch your rate.

The closer you are to closing on a home mortgage deal you have keep tracking your interest rates which continue to fluctuate. If the rate for the deal you are making suddenly goes up with no reasonable explanation you may have to find another lender for a mortgage even if you may have to push back your date of purchase by several days.

(2) Get preapproved, not prequalified.

The loan with the lowest rate and fees that are less than a thousand dollars are usually the best deal for people looking for a home mortgage. It pays to get a pre-approval for these loans. This usually entails filling out an application that details your income, savings and personal debt. It will be checked against your credit report and if it passes their tests, you can get the preapproval letter with how much you can borrow for your home mortgage.

This is much better than getting prequalified because prequalification does not include your credit score. In this manner, you get an idea of what problems you may encounter when getting a mortgage and what rates you can expect. But Should I Refinance Home

(3) Get the best rates

Fixed-rate loans now are so cheap there’s no point in looking for something else. It’s just a matter of shopping around to find out what is the best rate you can get for your home mortgage. You can do this by doing some aggressive research online, asking your friends or agent and joining credit unions.

With the market the way it is now, it shouldn’t be so hard to find a home mortgage to your advantage.

A small consolation of the mortgage crisis are the depressed refinance mortgage rates that are now available. These historically low rates make refinancing a very lucrative option for a lot of people, for extra money to spend or to save. But before you make a move take advantage of cheap refinance mortgage rates, you have to make sure to do the math and make sure that you don’t end up spending a lot when trying to close a refinancing deal. Here are some tips

Continue reading Take Advantage of Cheap Refinance Mortgage Rates

CitiGroup’s home mortgage subsidiary is Citi Mortgage. This banking group was one of the institutions most hurt by the subprime lending crisis and has subsequently lost billions in stock value and has had to retrench several thousand of its employees. CitiGroup’s new CEO, Vikram Pandit had taken all of the group’s mortgage activities and merged them into one entity, Citi Mortgage. In doing so, Mr. Pandit seeked to improve the control over the group’s mortgage practice as well as reduce the confusion brought about by maintaining several subsidiaries.

Citi Mortgage, which advertises their mortgage as Pay Less Now, Get More Now,  offers VA and FHA mortgages, as well as fixed rate conventional mortgages that are available at fixed rates for 15 or 30 years. They also offer several variable rate mortgages that start with an introductory fixed rate and then switch to a variable rate that depends on the prime for the rest of the loan.

Citi Mortgage is a part of Citigroup, one of the major issuers of subprime loans, and one of the most heavily damaged by the housing downturn and the subprime lending crisis. In November of 2007 Citigroup took a $7.5 billion loan from Abu Dhabi on poor terms just to stay afloat after suffering staggering losses. Shortly thereafter, Citigroup replaced its CEO.

Citibank planns to reduce it’s holdings by 20% in residential mortgages. This equates to about 45 billions dollars, to reduce their holdings in riskier assets and reduce their subprime losses. It plans to sell about 90% of it’s home loans and only allowing new home loans which they plan to hold on to.

All this increased toxic attitude towards new mortgages makes Citi Mortgage a hard place to get a new loan and it might not be the best place for homebuyers to go to in trying to get a home mortgage.

Visit their website at http://www.mortgage.com

Refinancing is becoming a hot topic as mortgage rates are lowered, almost an average of 5.7% for a 30 year fixed rate loan. In some cities, lenders already offer 5.5% or less and no more than $1,000 in fees. This has happened since mortgage rates plunged to 20 year lows in mid January.

These are new historical lows as mortgage rates have ranged between 6 to 10% during the past twenty years. The difference between monthly payments between today’s rates and the lowest historical lows is not much, around $25 for every $100,000 and thus refinancing has become a serious option for most home owners.

Most borrowers may be put off by the 20% of the loan amount that they have to put up as banks and mortgage companies will only loan about 80% of a home’s current value. However, there are several options that are available to a home buyer like applying for an FHA loan or a VA loan.

The FHA loan is a home mortgage guaranteed by the Federal Housing Authority and finances up to 95% of a home’s value. Another option is the Veteran’s Affairs which funds up to 100% of the home’s value and it may be the only program that offers 100% financing.

There is now a new era of “historically low” when it comes to mortgage rates and there is nothing like it.

Four years ago when we were all celebrating the arrival of already “historically low” mortgage rates. Back then, they were dancing at around 5.5% for a 30 year fixed mortgage which was truly significant back then because in the preceeding thirty years before that, 30 year fixed mortgages never posted a rate lower than 6.5% and actually climbed to 16+% at one point during the early 90’s.

But now, rates have reached a new low. Thanks to movements by the feds, rates could now hit 4.75% depending on your creditworthiness. That is almost one percent lower than the previous historic lows of half a decade ago. Last month, the national average rate was just a little over 5 percent.

People are aware of this opportunity now and refinancing activities have jumped up by over sixty percent in December, according to the Mortgage Banker’s Association, although these activities only count refinancing applications which may or may not become actual mortgages.

As a rule of thumb, refinancing makes sence if the new rate is about 1% lower than the old mortgage. At this rate it makes more sense any less and the upfront fees make refinancing expensive.

If you are looking to save some extra cash, it might be a good idea to look into refinancing your existing home mortgage. Granted, it may not be for everyone.