Yesterday was so nice
Feb. 28th, 2009 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonMy Friday started with staying home for a condo appraisal. On ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
motyl's advice we've been looking into refinancing, and, um, YEAH... for the cost of about $2500 we will be able to drop our interest rate almost a full percentage point (from 5.75% to 4.875%), switch from a 30-year term to a 15-year term, and stop having our taxes escrowed. All of these are things we want, but the first one is the craziest: it saves us more than $100K over the remaining life of the loan. Nicest of all, I am not finding this stressful; it's only paperwork, and doesn't determine big things like whether we get to live here. :-)
We don't have final approval yet, but the appraiser thought that we would have no trouble. Our place needs to be worth some percentage more than the loan amount in order for us to get the new loan, so here is a new reason to pay down mortgages faster than required, something I hadn't been aware of before: you'll have a lower principal balance, which makes it that much easier to refinance when housing prices are depressed.
Right now things are strange -- interest rates are low, but only really safe loans are getting approved at all. Luckily, our house seems to have retained its value from 5 years ago (though it maybe hasn't gone up to speak of, that's not of concern right now), and it turns outheisenbug now has the highest credit score I've ever heard of. High enough that I looked up the maximum possible score... which is 850. Keep working, bug!
What else happened yesterday? I did a great handstand when I wasn't expecting to. I got some stuff done at work that I wasn't expecting to, given my sleepiness level. I got some letters notarized and delivered and I got to play with the notarization stamp (very satisfying; I may need to become a notary public myself just so I can have one of those). I went out to dinner by myself, which is something I actually like very much although I complained about missing my date withheisenbug. I got to listen to a vice president speak at work, which is good because I hadn't met him before, although I think there's some chance that he may be a mobster.
motyl's advice we've been looking into refinancing, and, um, YEAH... for the cost of about $2500 we will be able to drop our interest rate almost a full percentage point (from 5.75% to 4.875%), switch from a 30-year term to a 15-year term, and stop having our taxes escrowed. All of these are things we want, but the first one is the craziest: it saves us more than $100K over the remaining life of the loan. Nicest of all, I am not finding this stressful; it's only paperwork, and doesn't determine big things like whether we get to live here. :-)We don't have final approval yet, but the appraiser thought that we would have no trouble. Our place needs to be worth some percentage more than the loan amount in order for us to get the new loan, so here is a new reason to pay down mortgages faster than required, something I hadn't been aware of before: you'll have a lower principal balance, which makes it that much easier to refinance when housing prices are depressed.
Right now things are strange -- interest rates are low, but only really safe loans are getting approved at all. Luckily, our house seems to have retained its value from 5 years ago (though it maybe hasn't gone up to speak of, that's not of concern right now), and it turns out
heisenbug now has the highest credit score I've ever heard of. High enough that I looked up the maximum possible score... which is 850. Keep working, bug!What else happened yesterday? I did a great handstand when I wasn't expecting to. I got some stuff done at work that I wasn't expecting to, given my sleepiness level. I got some letters notarized and delivered and I got to play with the notarization stamp (very satisfying; I may need to become a notary public myself just so I can have one of those). I went out to dinner by myself, which is something I actually like very much although I complained about missing my date with
heisenbug. I got to listen to a vice president speak at work, which is good because I hadn't met him before, although I think there's some chance that he may be a mobster.
