http://www.borrowisely.com The Mortgage HelpBook Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:21:18 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en You can make extra payments whenever you feel so, but the amounts will be usually limited to the maximum of 20% of the original loan's balance per year while the penalty period lasts (usually the first 3 or 5 years). Only amounts above the 20% are penalized. When the prepayment ... http://www.borrowisely.com/can-i-make-no-extra-payments-without-being-penalized/ A penalty that applies to refinancing only is a soft penalty; a penalty that applies to both refinancing and a home sale is a hard penalty. http://www.borrowisely.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-hard-and-a-soft-prepayment-penalty/ If your credit score is not very good, I am afraid, you don't have very much of a choice here. You are forced to do whatever your lender tells you to in order to get the loan. However, try as hard as you can to avoid the hard penalty . ... http://www.borrowisely.com/should-i-agree-to-a-prepayment-penalty/ The concrete amount is individual to each case, of course. It depends on the penalty terms agreed upon in the mortgage contract. Sometimes it is a fixed amount (an equivalent of six months of interest, for instance), or a percentage of the outstanding balance, fixed (around 2%) or regressive. For ... http://www.borrowisely.com/how-much-is-an-average-prepayment-penalty/ A prepayment penalty is the jack-in-the-box of the mortgaging world. Most times it is equally annoyingly unexpected (for the borrower), but unlike the dumb toy, it may cause people to lose their money, not just make them produce a polite squeak of a laugh. A prepayment penalty, if included into a ... http://www.borrowisely.com/prepayment-penalty/