Mortgage News
What's going on in the mortgage industry today
How to Accelerate Your Mortgage Payoff
Easy steps to accelerate your loan payoff:
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Pull up your online amortization schedule.
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Write a check for the full amount of your current payment.
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With that payment, send an additional check for as many additional principal payments as you plan to pay. Attach to that second check a note saying something like: “Enclosed please find a check for payment number six (for this example, we’ll say your next payment is payment number six). Also, an additional check for the principal amount for payments number 7, 8, 9, and 10.”
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The next month, you will send in payment number eleven.
You cannot skip payments for the next 4 months!
You may never skip a payment. You must make another full payment the next month (month seven in our example), but it will now be payment number eleven.
NEW 2019 LOAN LIMITS
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced that the maximum conforming loan limits for mortgages eligible for acquisition or guarantee by the two government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will be $484,350.
The conforming loan limit as established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) is reviewed each year and adjusted as necessary to reflect the change in the average U.S. home price. The new limit represents a 6.9 percent increase over the $453,100 limit for 2018.
Higher loan limits will vary but cannot exceed the new ceiling limit of $726,520 which is 150 percent of the baseline amount. A ceiling of $726,525 applies to Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. FHFA says that the substantial increase in prices nationwide means that most of the higher-priced areas will see increases in their loan limits.
The new limits are effective as of January 1, 2019. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the VA are expected to adopt the same loan limits for 2019.
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MORTGAGE RATES
Mortgage Rates Bounce Back Toward Recent Highs after hitting the lowest levels in exactly 2 weeks on Friday, mortgage rates bounced back up toward their recent highs today. This risk was already taking shape by Friday afternoon ..