S/O mortgages - clicky poll

[mrs.jacinthe]

Now you've all got me curious what kind of mortgages are going on over here.

[simpsongal]

We had an FHA and refied after 6 months to a conventional (to drop PMI) - so I voted conventional

[emoflamingo]

I'm pretty sure I have 2 FHA loans? I honestly have no idea, I don't do the thinking when it comes to money like that.

[niknik]

I have an FHA loan because we wanted a loan that included monies for renovation. They own us right now. We can refi later if we want but are happy with our interest rate and payment.

[housegeek]

We have FHA with intent to refi in a few years.

[halleesmom]

Do you have to refinance to drop the PMI from a FHA loan or just verify that 20% equity has been built up?

[SusanBAnthony]

I said rent, but our new mortgage will be conventional with 5% down. Our old one was an 80/20 with a hel, but we had paid the hel off in abut four years. Too bad we never saw that 20% we aid off, thanks to the housing crash.

My sil has a va loan. Her house was willed to the va as part of someone's estate. When the va sold the house, they offered financing with it. Wierd. So and BIL have no military ties. I had never heard of that before.

[SusanBAnthony]

Feb 21, 2013 21:23:40 GMT -5 halleesmom said:

Do you have to refinance to drop the PMI from a FHA loan or just verify that 20% equity has been built up?

I don't know about FHA, but for conventional, it depends on the lender, I think.  We are using Wells Fargo, and for them, it can drop either when we pay for an appraisal and show that we owe less than 80% of appraisal, or after two years, if we have paid off 20% of the original purchase price.  But apparently, the two year thing may not be legal, ie if we pay off 20% before two years, they are required to drop pmi immediately.  But they won't unless we kick and scream, according to the Internet. It will be a stretch to pay it off in tow years, though, so we aren't too worried.

[narockshard]

We have a Rural Development loan; we weren't required to put anything down and we don't have PMI although there was a 3.5% fee (of the price of the house) that could be rolled in to the total loan amount. So far we're happy with it!

[lolc]

Are there any advantages to an FHA loan over a conventional loan? I wonder if we would have gotten a lower rate or less PMI if we went FHA. Our old mortgage was conventional, 80/20, but thanks to the housing market we could not put 20% down on our new house, so we put 10% down and have PMI (I think the PMI is something like $79 per month). I was told the bank (BOA) would automatically drop the PMI after we paid down our mortgage to a certain amount (but can't remember what that amount is... just that it's going to be years before we can pay it down that much)....

ETA: I should have read the other post regarding FHA loans & 30 yr. PMI before asking that dumb question! lol

[Deleted]

We have a conventional loan but our area qualifies for a USDA loan, which we almost went with when we originally purchased. At this point, our income is too high (by about 12k/yr) to qualify for a USDA loan. It has to be under 115% of the median for the area.

A LOT of not really rural areas qualify for USDA loans, and hardly anyone knows about them.

[natablue]

Conventional. We bought our house in 2009, during the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit, and were warned that FHA loans were so backed up in the approval process that it might cost us losing the deal on the house, because many sellers in our area wouldn't/couldn't afford to wait that long to close.

[kaylie]

Feb 21, 2013 21:27:58 GMT -5 SusanBAnthony said:

Feb 21, 2013 21:23:40 GMT -5 halleesmom said:

Do you have to refinance to drop the PMI from a FHA loan or just verify that 20% equity has been built up?

I don't know about FHA, but for conventional, it depends on the lender, I think.  We are using Wells Fargo, and for them, it can drop either when we pay for an appraisal and show that we owe less than 80% of appraisal, or after two years, if we have paid off 20% of the original purchase price.  But apparently, the two year thing may not be legal, ie if we pay off 20% before two years, they are required to drop pmi immediately.  But they won't unless we kick and scream, according to the Internet. It will be a stretch to pay it off in tow years, though, so we aren't too worried.

For most lenders, 22% is the point that they HAVE to drop your PMI. You can request it once you hit 20%, though. I've never heard of a two year waiting period for a conventional, but I guess I wouldn't be terribly surprised if lenders were trying to screw people.

For FHA, there's a five year minimum period during which you pay PMI. Even if you hit 22% after a year, the PMI sticks with you for all five unless you refi to a different loan.

[Deleted]

We have a jumbo

[RoxMonster]

We have a conventional 30 year loan. We have PMI until we reach 20% down (we put down 5%).

[Marmee]

House we live in-was FHA but was refi'd last year to Conventional-30yr

Rental house--Conventional-15yr

Vacation home--paid off