How to Find the Best Mortgage Rates
July 30, 2010
Finding the best mortgage rates for a new home loan or even mortgage refinancing isn’t hard but it can take some work. If you want to find the lowest interest rates you can narrow it down by first entering your loan details into mortgage calculators and comparing the results across multiple mortgage lenders.
Mortgage Calculators
The interest rates from the mortgage calculator won’t be guaranteed, they’re just estimates. The rate quotes are based on a variety of factors (loan amount, credit score, loan-to-value ratio, and FHA vs conventional loans) which vary from person to person but they will help you narrow down where you can find the best mortgage rates.
Comparing Lenders
Once you have a short list of lenders for your home mortgage, put the loan rate and closing costs for each one into a spreadsheet. Make sure you used the same criteria for each of the mortgage loans to keep your comparison accurate. Then send the spreadsheet to the lenders on your list and ask them if they can give you a better interest rate or lower closing costs than their competitors.
Negotiating Interest Rates
This approach of getting multiple mortgage quotes online and asking for the best deal doesn’t require a lot of time-intensive negotiation or haggling over the best mortgage rates. If the banks are interested in your business, they will respond and let you know the best interest rate they can offer. The main hurdle is finding the name and email of a mortgage consultant or loan officer at the bank that has the authority to bargain with you.
A simple way to find the right person is to do a web search for the name of the bank along with the term “mortgage consultant” or “loan officer”. If that doesn’t turn up anything, just ask for the name and number of a loan officer using the contact form on their website.
Best Mortgage Rates
One thing to keep in mind, the interest rate the loan officer can offer you is limited by the bank’s willingness to adjust down from current mortgage rates. We were able to get a really low mortgage rate because the bank we used takes a high volume approach to their home loans.
The bank offers lower interest rates and lower loan origination fees than their competitors, which results in lots of customer referrals from friends and family members. So even though they earn less on each mortgage, the bank has a steady volume of borrowers thanks to the referrals.
The good news is that mortgage rates are the lowest they’ve been in years; it’s hard to say when they’ll be this low again. If you’re getting a new home loan or thinking about refinancing your mortgage I’d research interest rates to find out the best mortgage rates available and how they could help lower your monthly mortgage payment.
All posts by Ben Edwards
If you’re looking for the best bank to refinance your home loan there are several things you’ll want to know to avoid overpaying.
Nice post.On a different point of view, there’s a lot of techniques there is so all of us could select the right deal therefore in the end all of us is not going to regret any decisions that we chose. Whether or not it is re-financing on simply obtaining a mortgage loan it is both still a huge action. Speak to your mortgage loan provider today to get a lot more help.