Pls help me decide on 15/20/30 year refi loan term

[kadams767]

No thoughts on trying to float your rate longer. I’m not a gambler, and those rates are good, IMO.

But I will say that I prefer not having an escrow. I hate tying up extra money needlessly, the amount changes every year, etc. It’s so much easier to just pay my taxes and insurance on my own.

[freshsqueezed]

We are in the middle of refinancing too but can’t lock iurcrste until after appraisal. We are going down to 3.125 for 20 years versus our current 4.25 @ 30 so our payment is actually going up but not that much. I’m hoping if rates are going to drop that I’ve got 2 weeks for it.

As far as escrow, I may do it next year but for the rest of this year I’m not simply because there’s no guarantee my current mortgage company will release my escrow with payoff. I don’t want to have to pay 9 or 10 months to refi and wait for them to essentially reimburse me.

[hbomdiggity]

We haven’t escrowed for our past two houses and greatly prefer it over escrow which we had for our first home. The escrow was fine at first, but then it was wrong every year, under and over. We have auto savings set up monthly so we save for it (our property taxes are $$$) and our HO is bundled with the rest of our insurance. Nbd.

[Susie]

Thanks everyone for your comments and feedback! Lots of helpful things to consider.

Ultimately we locked earlier this week for 3.25% for 20 years. Just afterward it floated back up to 3.375%, so we were glad we had. The 15 year is so tempting, but 20 offers us valuable flexibility. We can always pay it off early, and I hope that we will. I'm also going to pass on escrowing taxes, it just seems more streamlined to do it myself.

Once this refi closes, I will no longer have any accounts with BOA, which I am stupid-excited about. They have been such a hassle to deal with, over the dumbest things. They still have my maiden name associated with my web login... I've been married for 12 years now. I've tried, and they can't get out of their own way to fix it, even though the name on the underlying financial accounts is correct. They send me nastygrams on the regular that they don't match. I KNOW, I'VE TRIED TO FIX IT! On the phone, in a branch... Sigh. I am so happy not to have to deal with them anymore!

[lessel]

Aug 23, 2019 9:17:04 GMT -5 Susie said:

Once this refi closes, I will no longer have any accounts with BOA, which I am stupid-excited about. They have been such a hassle to deal with, over the dumbest things. They still have my maiden name associated with my web login... I've been married for 12 years now. I've tried, and they can't get out of their own way to fix it, even though the name on the underlying financial accounts is correct. They send me nastygrams on the regular that they don't match. I KNOW, I'VE TRIED TO FIX IT! On the phone, in a branch... Sigh. I am so happy not to have to deal with them anymore!

OMG same all around, down to the maiden name login! I was so excited when we closed in June that I can finally close our BOA account. Of course, it's still sitting there and we haven't actually had the time to close it, but it's basically just dormant now. One day soon...

[simpsongal]

We had to set aside tax money this yr bc our escrow is waaaay off. It’s been very easy, I might look into dropping escrow going forward.
Glad you locked in an awesome rate!

[wanderlustmom]

Sounds great! We have done it both ways. Just sold the house we lived in for 12 years. We had it at a 15 year mortgage with a low interest rate (2.875) and it became like a piggy bank for us so we almost just stayed in that house. We had a really comfortable income to mortgage ratio and we made a lot of headway on that principal.

But at the end of the day, we wanted more space for our teen kids and a nicer neighborhood so we moved in July. We took a 30 year at 4 percent and only put down 10 percent. My husband took some of our equity and added it to the stocks and we aren’t as concerned about paying off this one faster though DH still plans to retire early. It was such a hard decision and maybe at some point we will refinance. This is my first time loving a house so I hope it’s worth it. I can see the merit of a small mortgage and the intangible benefit of a house meeting our needs more and paying more for it. Sorry I got off on an anecdotal tangent

[scm1011]

I just want to say that this thread inspired me to refi my own mortgage. We had a 7/1 ARM at 2.875% that was about to readjust up to 4.5%. I locked in 3.9% on a 30 yr last week (Its for a multi-family property, so prime rates are higher). We plan to pay extra, but want the flexibility of a 30 yr since we're about to start paying $800 a week for daycare ::sob::

[liveintheville]

We refi’d this summer to 3.65 30 year fixed with half a point or something. We were looking at buying a new car and our financial advisor was like why don’t you get rid of that arm first. So here we are. New mortgage and used car.
scm1011 I feel you on the day care. Our friends were so thrilled to have their kids in school. Speaking of which today is the first day back.