Title: 1% Mortgage Refinance - How?
11 Mortgage Refinance - How? 1 Mortgage
Refinance loans, youve probably seen 100
different advertisements, but how is it
possible? There is really only one big secret to
1 mortgages 1 minimum payments are below the
interest payable on the loan. Once weve
addressed this feature, most of the other facets
of 1 mortgages are relatively logical. 1
mortgages, which now come in dozens of varieties
with start rates from below 1 (some even
starting at 0 for a few months after refinance)
up to 4 or more, offer astonishingly low
payments. Some of them offer fixed rates for 30
or even 40 years, some of them are adjustable
from the day you take them out, all of these are
basically 1 mortgages and are extremely
popular amongst homeowners today. 1 mortgages
and their offspring are being used for debt
consolidation, cash flow management,
investments, and for tax purposes, and they are
being used a lot. A full 40 of home loans
originated in 2005 and 2006 are estimated to be
from the 1 mortgage family, with multiple
payment options. By its proponents, the success
of the 1 mortgage has been hailed as a new era
of affordability and flexibility, of an extremely
sharp financial tool once available only to the
very rich now available to every family in the
country. Its opponents tend to think that the 1
mortgage is a bit too sharp for the average
homeowner to handle, they fear Average Joes
could conceivably cut themselves. Despite their
division, one thing is certain, the popularity of
the 1 mortgage is driven by the relentless
pursuit of the American dream. There are more
homeowners in the United States today than in
any other period in history, and many of those
who own homes have only been able to accomplish
home ownership, which was once a lifelong
achievement, in their early 20s and 30s,
largely because of the extended availability of
these 1 mortgages to normal borrowers. How much
less expensive is a 1 mortgage payment option
versus the comparable 30 Year Fixed traditional
principal and interest payment? For a
500,000.00 Mortgage 1 Minimum Payment
1200.00 Normal Loan Payment 3000.00 ---------
-------------------- Cash Flow / Savings
1800.00 Its easy to see why the 1 mortgage
refinance is so heavily marketed as a way to cut
your mortgage payment in half. In the above
example, the 1 mortgage minimum payment option
is 60 less than a typical, traditional principal
interest loan payment. 1 mortgage
minimum payments are usually 50 lower than even
the highly lauded Interest Only
2- payment mortgages, and most loans in the 1
mortgage family include the ability to pay more
than just 1 if need be. - So How Does it Work?
- In fact, 1 mortgages are more than just the 1
start rate. They have a fully indexed rate as
well, which is the true amount of interest due
each month. When making a 1 mortgage minimum
payment, the borrower is not paying all of the
interest due, which is seen by some as a good
thing and some as a bad thing. Lets examine some
of the commonly perceived benefits and caveats
of 1 mortgages - Commonly Perceived Benefits of the 1 Mortgage
Family - Extremely Low Monthly Minimum Payment As weve
seen in our example, the minimum payment option
is less than half of the typical traditional
mortgage payment. - Flexibility to Control Your Own Money Unlike a
traditional mortgage, which requires a payment
to principal each month, 1 mortgages allow
borrowers to take the power into their own hands
to make principal payments when they want to, e.g
after a bonus or a particularly good year. - Separate Cash Flow from Equity While many
personal finance pundits laud the benefits of
building home equity, the reality is that
investing home equity yields a 0 return on
investment on a month to month basis. In the
above example, paying the traditional principal
and interest payment forces the borrower to
invest 1800 more each month in their home,
money which is locked up entirely in the equity
of the home. Home Equity is illiquid, meaning
all this money locked in equity cannot be
accessed unless the home is sold or refinanced.
The bank wont cut a check each month for the
borrowers home equity in a traditional loan.
With a 1 mortgage minimum payment, that 1800
difference in payments is money in the
borrowers pocket, to invest or spend at their
discretion. By deferring interest using a 1
mortgage, the borrower has full access to money
that normally would be locked up until they sold
the property. That 1800 per month adds up to
over 100,000.00 in cash over 5 years on a 1
mortgage, and its ava - Maximize Debt Consolidation Using a 1 mortgage
refinance to pay off all of your other
creditors, such as credit card companies and high
interest rate lenders, means that you can save
even more money than with a 1 mortgage refinance
alone. Since you arent throwing high interest
money at your creditors each month, the cash
which you save by making the 1 mortgage payment
actually goes into your pocket, your savings,
your investments, or wherever you need it most.
Thats ultimate control. Lets say that in our
500,000 1 mortgage example above, we rolled in
30,000 of credit card and other high interest
debt that have a monthly minimum payment
requirement of 1,000. By using a 1 mortgage
refinance to pay off those debts, total monthly
savings using the earlier example would be
3- over 2800 per month, 1000 from the debt
consolidation plus 1800 from the difference
between the traditional loan payment at 6 and
the 1 mortgage minimum payment. - Turn Equity into a Tax Deduction First, the 1
mortgage payment is 100 interest and therefore
should be 100 tax deductible in most cases.
Secondly, One of the most attractive benefits of
1 mortgages is the additional tax deduction
available on deferred interest. What this means
is that borrowers can realize a tax deduction on
interest they did not have to lay out the cash
for, and choose the time at which this deduction
is realized, which can be a huge savings upon
liquidity or refinance. For real estate
investors, this is a huge advantage as it can
often wash out the capital gains consequences of
selling a property. Disclaimer We do not
dispense tax advice, and you should consider
consulting a CPA. - Easy Qualification Normally, to qualify for low
payment mortgages, borrowers are required to
have exceptional credit. However, 1 mortgage
refinance loans are routinely available to
borrowers with credit scores as low as 620, and
if they are borrowing less than 80 of the value
of their home, scores can even be in the 500s
provided there are no late mortgage payments
reported on their credit file. The borrowers
income can be stated, and sometimes no income or
employment documentation is required at all. - Enhanced Protection from Foreclosure Because the
minimum payment option is so low, the cash
savings each month so high, and the loan is so
flexible, the 1 mortgage family offers
homeowners a low minimum payment option which
they have a much higher likelihood of paying
should they suffer an interruption of income or
become disabled. - Biweekly Payments A popular way to maximize the
benefits of the 1 mortgage refinance is to
elect to make biweekly payments (which are
available on select 1 mortgages). This
optimizes the loan to coincide with most
borrowers payment cycles and reduces any
possible negative effects of deferring interest. - Commonly Perceived Caveats of the 1 Mortgage
Family - Artificially Low Payments Because the minimum
payments are so low compared to traditional
mortgages, many pundits fear that people who
would normally not qualify for home ownership
can now own a home. The fear is that new or low
income homeowners could get in over their
heads by buying more house than they can truly
afford. Ultimately, it is up to the borrower to
decide how much they can afford. - Deferred Interest Often referred to as negative
amortization, this concern is commonly cited by
journalists as a negative because the loan
balance may increase over time if the minimum
payment is always selected. However, this
perspective does ignore the advantages of
dramatically increased cash flow in the
borrowers pocket each month and the tax
benefits of deferring interest. Of course, the
borrower can choose for themselves whether they
want to spend their money paying interest to the
bank or if they would rather
put the difference into their own pockets.
4- Depreciation If the value of the borrowers home
falls dramatically, and other factors force the
borrower to sell the home while the value is low,
the borrower may wind up owing - more than the home is worth. This is a valid risk
over short periods of time for all types of
mortgages, not just 1 mortgages. Even a
traditional principal and interest mortgage does
not pay off enough principal over the first 5
years of its life to offset a dramatic short term
decline in home values. The risk of property
values declining is a real risk of owning
property, period. However, history tells us that
residential real estate appreciates consistently
over any given ten year period in the past 50
years. - Too Easy To Qualify This may not seem to be a
disadvantage to most borrowers looking to
purchase or refinance a home, but there are those
who believe that borrowers should be forced to
document significantly more income and assets to
qualify for these types of loans. A lot of this
sentiment is an outgrowth of antiquated
conceptions of 1 mortgages as a Rich Mans
Mortgage, which used to require significant net
worth to obtain, and some of it is attributable
to equally antiquated one size fits all notions
about mortgages. Your perspective will likely
depend on whether or not you are in a position to
provide extensive documentation of your income
and assets in support of your loan application. - Many of the criticisms of 1 mortgages revolve
around the adjustable rate variety of these
mortgages, which like all adjustable rate
mortgages go up and down with the rest of the
market. However, in most 1 mortgages, the
minimum payment stays fixed and can go up or
down only 7.5 per year. So if your payment in
Year 1 is 1000.00 , in Year 2 it can go no
higher than 1075.00. Because the rate on the
loan can change more or less than the minimum
payment, which is extremely low, the loan can
result in the deferral of interest if only the
minimum payment is made. Many of the amortization
issues which are seen by critics of 1 Mortgages
as their key detractor have been recently
resolved by the introduction of fixed rate
minimum payment loans to the 1 mortgage family. - Fixed rate 1 mortgage variations, the latest
additions to the 1 mortgage family, have fixed
interest rates from 3 to 30 years or more. The
minimum payment option is generally available
for the first 5, 10, 15 or in some cases 20 years
of the mortgage, at which point the 1 mortgage
payment recasts or readjusts to the interest only
payment or the full principal interest
payment. During the fixed period, the loan
payment and interest rates of fixed 1 mortgages
are utterly predictable and can be defined down
to the penny. Many borrowers who would prefer a
fixed rate can benefit significantly from the 30
year fixed 1 mortgage, which actually carries a
minimum payment of 1.95 and a fixed rates in the
6 to 7 range for 30 years. - While there are those in the journalism community
who believe that 1 mortgages have too much
power for your average homeowner, ultimately the
decision is in the homeowners hands. Make a
high payment to the bank each month, or put the
money in their pockets. And homeowners seem
evenly divided, as refinances into loans from the
1
mortgage category are projected to represent over
50 of all refinances in 2007.
5Traditional mortgages are not a one size fits all
solution, and neither are 1 mortgages, but with
low minimum payment options, excellent debt
consolidation capabilities, significant cash flow
and tax advantages made possible by deferring
interest, and flexibility to control your
finances or insulate yourself from interruptions
in income or disability, 1 mortgages continue
to post significant growth across the country.
Whether or not a 1 mortgage refinance is right
for you should be determined by performing a
detailed analysis of your personal financial
situation with a home loan professional who has