Strategies Resource Center

Your lender offers to drop your rate from 6.55% to 6.30% for $4,000 at closing. The payment falls by $66 a month, which sounds like an easy yes — until you divide one number by the other and find you need to keep the loan for five years before you...

Every borrower asks the same question before they apply: what number do I actually need to hit? Ask three loan officers and you will get three answers, because the honest one is that it depends on which loan you are asking for. Your debt-to-income...

You have found the perfect house, your credit score is in a solid range, and you have saved up for a down payment. You feel completely ready to make an offer. But behind the scenes, lenders are analyzing a single, silent metric that directly...

Picture a homeowner eight years into a 30-year mortgage, paying faithfully every month, watching the balance crawl down — then a friend mentions splitting that payment in half and paying every two weeks instead. Same money, different timing. The...

The Impact of Lower Interest Rates on Your Purchasing Power The Amount of Your Mortgage Loan Is Only the Beginning When looking for a mortgage, interest rates are of utmost importance. This is because mortgage rates impact more than simply the...

What Happens if Interest Rates Decrease After Locking in a Mortgage Rate? If you lock in a mortgage rate, and then interest rates climb, you get to maintain the lower rate you locked in. But what if you lock up a mortgage, and then interest rates...