Pollish: % interest on mortgage?

In My Humble Opinion
21
  1. Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
  2. Our mortgage is 3.89% locked in for five years. Our amortization is 25 years.
  3. 28% of the house’s value. We were not required to get CMCH mortgage insurance at this percentage (all mortgages in Canada are insured by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation if you put down 20% or less).
  4. One car loan (4/5th completed), one line of credit (used for purchasing shares - we own far more in shares than we owe on the LOC). Both of us have about as good a credit rating as you can get.
  5. We qualified on one salary. We arranged for bi-weekly payments to accelerate the repayment schedule by years.
22

We refinanced two weeks ago:

  1. Cambridge MA
  2. 4.625% Fixed 30 year
  3. 40%
  4. no other loans
  5. nothing of interest

Before the refinance the rate was 5.75%, which we thought was pretty good at the time.

23
  1. Netherlands
  2. 5.2 %
  3. 30%
  4. no loans or credit other than my college loan (I think it was about $3000 euros).
  5. I’m self-employed. Which over here means you can forget about getting any kind of mortgage unless you can show 3+ years of income, put in a lot of cash yourself and/or have the % hiked up.
24
  1. USA - Minnesota
  2. 4.75% 30-yrs fixed
  3. 30%
  4. no other outstanding loans. Good credit ratings.
  5. This was our 4th loan using the same loan officer/bank.
25
  1. Greater Denver Area, Colorado
  2. 5.0, 30 year fixed.
  3. ~25%
  4. None outstanding, excellent credit.
  5. No.
26

See, I knew there were things I was forgetting. Funny thing is, I do mention in my own 5 that my mortgage was “fixed to variable.”

27
  1. Northern Virginia (just outside Washington DC)
  2. 5.125% now (originally 6.35%, refinanced to 5.75% now 5.125%)
  3. 20%
  4. We had a longish history of paying our bills on time, so we had good credit ratings, hence the good interest rate. .
  5. At the time of the last refi, we had one car payment, and we also had(have) a home equity line of credit which nearly queered the deal. Despite the mortgage company being perfectly happy with that HELOC before the refi, they wanted its limit dropped as part of the refi.
28

Tennessee, USA
4.625% (15 years)
20%
no outstanding loans; excellent credit
no other debt besides house (no car payment, credit card, student loan, etc)

29
  1. Your location. Silicon Valley
  2. The %APR on your mortgage. 4.85% for our bank mortgage, just refinanced. 7% to my wife’s father, but he is 94 and my wife is an only child, so we are paying ourselves to some extent.
  3. % of the house’s value you put down.
    About 50% for the original mortgage, and we’re up to 75% now. We had no trouble getting a loan.
  4. What kind of outstanding loans and other credit history did you have when you got the mortgage. Excellent credit history, and we had a house in NJ which had appreciated very nicely. We also have no credit card debt or auto loans.
  5. Any other info which you believe may have affected your mortgage’s conditions or about the conditions themselves.
    You forgot to ask about mortgage terms. Our new one is 30 year fixed. We took out a little bit more than we had before to cover our daughter’s student loans, since we pay less interest for the mortgage than for the loans, and even with that our monthly payments are a bit lower than they were. We usually pay $100 extra a month.
30

My data is a bit old, but here it is:

  1. Schenectady NY
  2. It was 8.5%; a great rate in 1979. (The mortgage is paid off now)
  3. About 1/3rd. It was $31K and we put around 10K down
  4. No outstanding loans. Excellent credit history.
  5. This was an assumable mortgage; the owner had taken it out several years before. The rate was 8.5%; the best we could do elsewhere at the time was 9%, and that was because my wife worked in a bank and got a special employee’s deal. Technically, I didn’t even take out the mortgage – the original owner did and if I had defaulted, he would have been on the hook, not me.
31
  1. Northern Virginia.
  2. 5.25%
  3. I don’t remember exactly, but it was something pretty small, as in less than 5%.
  4. I had a very small amount of student loans and a perfect credit history.
  5. I bought this house last year, when housing prices were just about rock bottom. I also scooped up Barack Obama’s $8,000 check for first-time homebuyers, so I’m one of the few people who had more money in the bank after buying my first house than before.
32
  1. Burlington, Ontario, Canada
  2. 1.5%, 5 year term, was a 22 year amortization but has dropped to 15. Variable mortgage, you see; it’s technically .75 below prime, so it started at something like 4 and is now 1.5. Obviously, they would not have given us that deal if they knew what was going to happen to interest rates - we signed the mortgage a few weeks before the fiscal crisis. It’s been a windfall.
  3. 5%, all from proft from selling our previous house
  4. Some minor credit card debt, a car loan, some government studen debts, and an existing, smaller mortgage. No major credit issues in our past.
  5. In Canada the primary concern is your income and existing debts. Our income was more than sufficient to get us the mortgage we wanted.
33
  1. Wisconsin, USA
  2. 3.99% APR
  3. 30 years ago, we put down 5%. I’ve paid off nearly all of the house and all I have is a home-equity loan at 3.99%.
  4. When I got my mortgage it was at nearly 10.5%. We were thrilled–it was a state veteran’s loan. Interest rates were sky high in the early 1980s. We had no other debt and the mortgage was for $50,000.
  5. Without the state veteran’s program, we would have needed 20% down and the interest rate would have been about 15%.
34
  1. southeast louisiana (US)
  2. 4.75%
  3. 20%
  4. according to the bank, credit score was high.
  5. I have refinanced the house at least 3 times, driving the interest down each time. The house is definitely worth more than I paid for it-though not nearly as much as a couple of years ago!