mortgage loan

How to keep the low teaser rate for your mortgage

Posted 33 weeks 1 day ago by Philip Brewer

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave a speech yesterday, talking about the administration's plan to "address the challenges" of the housing market downturn and related credit squeeze. Part of their plan is to freeze the low teaser rate on the mortgages of people who have been making their mortgage payments okay, but who would face foreclosure if the rate went up. If you have a mortgage with one of those low teaser rates, you might be interested to know how to keep that lower rate--perhaps even get it back, if it has already reset.

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What's faster for mortgage payoff: $100/month extra or 1 payment/year extra?

Posted 49 weeks 5 days ago by Julie Rains

Real Estate and Housing

new homeowners outside of house with realtor sign

Recently, a reader with a 15-year mortgage and an interest in accelerated mortgage payoff asked if it was better to pay $100 per month extra ($1,200 per year) or make an extra payment at the end of each year? The short answer: it depends on your loan balance and interest rate though generally the higher extra payment is going to result in a faster payoff. There's more, but I’ll go ahead and put my disclaimer here and say that I am responding to an inquiry not necessarily recommending that you pay extra on your mortgage. Here are the detailed calculations:

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Speeding through your mortgage

Posted 1 year ago by Julie Rains

Filed Under: Real Estate and Housing

speeding car

Now that many of you have crunched the numbers for accelerating your mortgage payoff, I think you are ready for a quick lesson on speeding through your mortgage. Now, I am not saying you should speed through your mortgage but there is a program available that helps you pay off your mortgage very quickly (approximately 10 years) so let’s see how it works.

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DIY Mortgage Acceleration

Posted 1 year ago by Julie Rains

Filed Under: Real Estate and Housing

woman pausing from paint project

Do-it-yourselfers who are weary of yet another trip to the home improvement store may like this DIY project. It has the possibilities of increasing home equity just as quickly as a bath remodel or new deck.

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How to Build Your Own Amortization Schedule

Posted 1 year ago by Julie Rains

Filed Under: Real Estate and Housing

project-ready couple

Looking for a dull, but financially eye-opening home project? Great! Today, we're going to build an amortization schedule. All the tools you need are: 1) an electronic spreadsheet with PMT (payment calculation), addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication capabilities (I use Excel) and 2) this guide.

Let me go ahead and answer the questions you may have after reading this guide and completing your project:

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