Have any of you refinanced your mortgage lately?

The Investopedia link I provided indicates otherwise.


  • Silicon Valley has been the epicenter of the tech industry for decades.
  • High housing costs, high tax rates, and strict regulations have made it challenging to live, work, and do business in the area.
  • More tech companies are opting to move operations to Texas and other states with lower costs of living and more-favorable tax laws.
  • Oracle and Hewlett Packard are among the tech giants who have recently announced plans to move their headquarters to Texas.
I wonder how its booming in the midst of a quantifiable tech exodus? Maybe another industry is taking techs place?
Perhaps read your article. It does not say the Valley is not growing.
 
Actually you totally misunderstood. The font was copy/pasted from that site I linked to. I tried to modify it, and clicked on the "bold" button, etc. but could not change it. Go to the site and see it for yourself.

However, YOU USING BIG FONTS in this reply just makes you look (I'll be very nice here!) um, presumptuous.
I know I know, just trying kidding. We cool? I still love you.
 
Are you still paying the private mortgage insurance along with your mortgage payment? PMI is insurance that you pay to protect the bank-it doesn't benefit you at all. If you have 20% or better equity in your home, you can have it removed from your mortgage payment. You may have to get an appraisal done to show the mortgage holder, but it would pay off. If you do refinance it should not be added with the equity you have in your home.
 
The Investopedia link I provided indicates otherwise.


  • Silicon Valley has been the epicenter of the tech industry for decades.
  • High housing costs, high tax rates, and strict regulations have made it challenging to live, work, and do business in the area.
  • More tech companies are opting to move operations to Texas and other states with lower costs of living and more-favorable tax laws.
  • Oracle and Hewlett Packard are among the tech giants who have recently announced plans to move their headquarters to Texas.
I wonder how its booming in the midst of a quantifiable tech exodus? Maybe another industry is taking techs place?
First off, this is one part of the equation instead of the whole picture. The thing I see among people here is: there are family raisers who move to lower cost of living area. Most of the people leaving bay area is moving to within once a week going to office distance, aka within 3 hours. It drops the housing price from 3M to 800k or so. This may limit their job choice to 50% of the total market but that also means they get to keep, say, 75% of the top pay instead, sounds like a good deal.

Then you have companies who think it is unsustainable to pay 350k a person to let them afford 2.5M home. These likely already opened offices in Seattles, LA, maybe Austins. They likely want to recruit from top competitors instead of just "we will move 50% of our workforce for 50% of the pay" crowd like the last generation down hill tech giants (Oracle and HP are old tech giants, they are irrelevant these days going forward). Intel did the same decades ago, this is what got them into the mess they are in now.

I think a lot of non tech people view the tech industry backward of what we see them. You need to pay people because they make you money, you then let the market decide how much the cost of living is fair. If you go the opposite of paying people only how much you want to pay them because they only need so little to live, the higher productivity crowd will move to higher cost of living area to make the money and still keep more after paying the higher cost of living. Executives will need to decide what kind of companies they want to be. You can be run a company constantly looking to cut cost and minimize living expense / tax so you can pay people as little as possible, or you can go where people making a lot of money are at but then you pay extra because of the high tax and cost of living.

I am just using myself as an example: I am just an average worker bee not particularly good. I make typical income in this high cost of living place and I ride with the tech boom and wind. I bought my home at 800k and then another one at 970k, my tech stock appreciation and job hopping got them paid off. My smarter friend from school went to a low cost of living place (Roseville, CA), bought a low cost home 20 years ago at 200k, it is now worth 600k, but he is stuck working for Intel until they pissed him off and now work for Toshiba. He is making 75% of my salary now but never got lucky with stock and certainly didn't bought another home, he "rest and vest" like most tech workers moving to Dallas I know of.

Maybe this is just my view, maybe this is the norm, but I'm just giving you one view point you didn't see typically from SE Texas. Cheers.
 
Its real interesting, I dealt with unrefutable facts, but the guy from CA corroborated nothing. I provided a number of links to back up everything I said, but no one else did. The guy from CA also erroneously scolded me for big fonts, before getting the full picture,

But oh, OK, "Texans are the HARDEST people to deal with".... LOL!

I don't think Texans are the hardest to work with. I've worked with a few in my past and IMO they are not exactly like that.

Most I know just want others not to tell them what to do and let them decide, and they also try not to tell you what to do (except Californian, they want to tell Californian what to do A LOT, at least in politics).

Californians are the opposite, they want everyone to be like them and do the same thing, because of "truth". LOL.
 
Friend, you are very mistaken. The Valley is booming right now.
The already insane housing market continues to go higher and companies are expanding like crazy.
In my neighborhood houses sell in 1 day.
I think the market actually went UP a lot recently. People are not spending money eating out and commuting so they might as well cash out the QE inflated stock price and buy a home. People moving out of CA cash out their houses and live in other places, and let the tech boom buy them out at the top price.

I remember 5 years ago the going rate is to bid 200k above asking, I heard these days it is 400k above asking.
 
Your rate may be fine depending on where you are in your loan. I would compare your current interest expense to a refi's interest expense.
Perhaps just put more into the monthly payment and make it act like a 15 year loan?
The interest rate is only part of the equation.

I would talk to a good broker. I have one who really helped me pay off our property. I owe him a lot.

That's really the only thing that needs to be taken away from this conversation.

Run the numbers, or talk to someone who will.

You're not going to buy oil today based on the price of 10 years ago, so why pay that price on your mortgage, especially if it now costs less?
 
My current mortgage is at 4.05% APR. I have been seeing people refinance for rates in the low 2% range. The last time I checked with my current mortgage company their best rate for a VA loan was still over 3% and wasn't worth refinancing. I might be better off now to go to a 15 year mortgage, or at least not go more than 20 years, which is how much time I have left on my current mortgage. What company did you use? I don't trust these things that pop up on FB (like Quicken and similar places), most of them seem like shysters to me. Any amount I can lower my monthly payment due to paying less in interest is a net income increase...
I know from your past posts that you are pretty smart with finances so my reply based on the same.
I know the feeling, kind of like a catch 22.
We have a 3.87% which we refinanced in around 2015 from roughly 7% no doc original in 2006.
We really dont have much left on the morgage which wasnt all that much compared to what we bought when we moved south in 2006 and actually pay double (and more) the principle in extra payments every month.

Anyway, out of curiosity we too have seen those low rates mentioned, not as big a deal to us but what the heck, we too looked into them.
We didnt go crazy over it but yes, seemed enticing, so a few phone calls AND the fact that I now work for one of the largest banks in the country, we found the APR for 15 year refi didnt match up closely to the actual rates we were seeing advertised.
I also suspect much of the public doesnt understand the difference between the rate and APR.

So anyway, between the bank I work for which also gives me an employee discount on the rate AND our other national/ local pretty well known bank which currently holds our mortgage the banker who did the original refi couldn't make the difference work between the 3.87 rate we were paying and the 15 yr wifi rates.
One of those truly good bankers who worked up both current mortgage and what the new refi would be, keep in mind he makes living like this and even showed how it wasnt worth it. Keep in mind we repaying more then double the principle every month in extra payments. Also take into account the tax write off which also factors in.

In your case though, you a little bit higher then the 3.87 we have and everyones situation is different when talking such low rates, anyway, I am sure you know to keep the actual cost of the refi and not just the rate but the actual APR.

Side note - when we rate shop we are a prime borrower to lenders so the rates we see we get which is always the lowest possible and even with that it wasnt worth it to us.
Also when we refi the only purpose was not lower the payment OR BORROW MORE MONEY !!!! *LOL* but to pay off the loan faster. Meaning any money saved form the refi which was huge going from 7% ish to 3.87 went right back into the mortgage to pay it down faster.
 
Last edited:
went from 3.75 to 2.4 in december, 30 to 15 year, took 25 years off and and my mortgage went up about 80 dollars.
 
I just finished going from 3.8% to 2.15% on $188K left of a $238K loan. I transitioned from a 30-year to a 15-year. It's costing me more per month, but I paid more than that anyway per month, so it's not going to be noticed. I negotiated fees some, including finding my own appraiser for $200 less than what the CU wanted to charge me. That saved a few bucks. What will be noticed is the faster pay-off rate due to the interest reduction (which doesn't seem like much but it is) and not having to ever log into Wells Fargo (barf!) for anything. I hate Wells Fargo.
 
Up here in Canada, mortgages are written for 6 months to 5 years, with a smaller of 10 year mortgages. A friend just got a 5 year @ 1.8%. Those who locked in pre-COVID got 5 years at 2.6 %. At the end of the term you are free to write a new mortgage with any bank or mortgage company or stay with the existing company, with terms that are present at that moment. Those who were lucky enough to have a mortgage term come up just now, got the new 1.8% mortgage without any penalty at all.
 
Last edited:
Refi in December 2020 to a 30-year 2.75% on $380K - original note was 4.25%.
 
I'm curious how the bank gets compensated for that. They were making 4.25 % off off your mortgage and now they only get 2.75%. Is there some sort of cash penalty fee? Thanks. (Canadian here).
Different bank. Old bank borrowed money at the old higher rate. The new bank borrows at the newer lower rate. Old bank gets what it is contractually obligated to get when the new bank pays it off and new bank writes a new mortgage based on their new lower borrowing costs. Even with the same bank, it doesn't matter. The same bank can now borrow money at the new lower rate and pay itself off at the higher older rate. It's all tied to what it costs the bank to borrow the money when the mortgage was originally written.

My business partner was able to refi with Bank of America with no documentation and no work - it was literally a button on the webpage for his account that said would you like us to lower your rate? He clicked it said yes and signed some papers later he had a new lower rate.
 
Different bank. Old bank borrowed money at the old higher rate. The new bank borrows at the newer lower rate. Old bank gets what it is contractually obligated to get when the new bank pays it off and new bank writes a new mortgage based on their new lower borrowing costs.
Thanks. OK, so there is some kind of pre-existing agreement of how much you have to pay to break the existing mortgage. Is it based on a certain amount of months of mortgage payments?
 
Thanks. OK, so there is some kind of pre-existing agreement of how much you have to pay to break the existing mortgage. Is it based on a certain amount of months of mortgage payments?
None of my mortgages have ever had a prepayment penalty. They don't care when or how it's paid off as long as the principle plus the interest you've actually incurred is paid off. They maybe losing out on interest on the rest of the loan but they are also getting a large amount of money back all at once to loan out again - once they get the loan money + interest back they are whole again - you paid the principle plus the cost of time you had the money in the form of interest - everyone is happy.

Another way to think about it - you only owe the interest for the time you've actually held the money. Just because you borrow $300K and it says at the end of 30-years you will have paid back $500K - you don't owe the $200K in interest unless you keep the money for the entire 30 years.
 
Back
Top