Day 1 - This being Easter (and Happy Easter Everyone) it is a time for new beginnings & rebirth, so my count down changes. Day 1 of my families new adventure into a new home.
Locking in, gambling the monthly payment away… Oh, the fun never ends.
Once we were under contract with our “house-with-the-view” we received a estimated settlement sheet from our mortgage broker. To my amazement and glee right there written at the bottom was printed our projected monthly payment. It was… Beautiful. Less than I was expecting. I was very happy. This whole move seems to be working. We are going to have less of an outlay and actually save money! The quoted interest rate was 4.875%. Pretty damn good. I was happy. So I tucked that thought into the “happy place” in the back of my mind where I tend to venture when I’m feeling down. Since then my brain has been occupied by moving, inspections, contractors estimates and work…
Drawing closer to settlement means the beginning of lots of papers to sign with the mortgage company. Things that have to do with our identity, social security numbers, blah, blah, blah. These were all signed in the middle of the moving process (not kidding, I believe I signed them on the floor because the table was in a POD somewhere). I actually can’t really remember what they were regarding, but I remember reading them and them making sense.
I’m not sure how we got here, but all of a sudden we couldn’t get the 4.875% interest rate anymore. But that’s what was on the estimated settlement sheet. Doesn’t that mean that’s our rate? No, you have to officially “Lock-in” But I thought we had. I’m confused. It was right there in print. OK, so I didn’t actually say the words “Lock me in” out loud, apparently you need to do that. Oh, the rules… Ok, so where do we stand today? Well, we could still get that rate if we take a point. A point, what’s a point? Apparently it’s 1% of the loan amount. 1.5 points… 1.5% of the loan amount and so on. And it’s not like you can wrap that into the loan amount, you have to pay cash up front. AARRGHH! There goes my renovation budget.
Well, what should we do? Now that the rate has gone up? Lock in at 5% or take the point. I don’t know, let’s think about it and get back to the broker tomorrow. Oh, my friends… you can’t do that. The next day the rates and point spread went up. What? Point spread? When did I wake up in Vegas? Ok, so we could do 5.125% or 5% with .675 points, or 4.875% with 1.5 points. The whole thing makes me dizzy and my dream monthly payment keeps rising. Should we gamble and “let it ride?” (Vegas again) hoping the rates fall? Well, we did. Wrong choice… The next day, even worse. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? What happened to 4.875% with no points that we had a few weeks ago? That’s what I had always believed was ours. Why can’t it be?
Oh, let’s just lock-in and get it over with. The longer we compare and discuss it just keeps getting worse. Oh, anger was brewing in my soul. As you can see, I’m still not over it… So, in the end we put it to rest. We got 5% and 1.75 points. Wow, I feel like money is just disappearing. This raises my dream monthly payment by about $30 per month. And forking out the “points” is killing my future hardwood floors. Oh the humanity! Not quite sure I understand why we were so screwed. Guess, that’s just the way the world works. But, in the end… the next day it all went up again. So we locked in at the right time… two weeks too late. :(
