Posts tagged as:

Mortgage Insurance

September 27, 2009

Homeowners Insurance

Homeowners Insurance is not only an essential support for you as a homeowner, it is also an unavoidable part of a mortgaging process. You are required to have homeowners insurance on the property you are mortgaging, no mortgage will close without it. The lenders’ concern is obvious – your property is the collateral of their [...]

January 12, 2009

FHA-Insured Mortgages

There has been a lot of change in probably the most liberal until recently mortgage offer – the FHA-insured mortgage. Are you confused by the middle word in the title? Well, it is there rather to clarify any possible confusion or misunderstanding that FHA mortgages (that’s how they are called a lot more often) usually [...]

December 6, 2008

My fixed rate mortgage payments keep changing from year to year. Am I missing something?

Each period mortgage payment is in fact a combination of several payments: towards the interest, towards the principal (if the mortgage is not interest-only) and optionally towards PMI and the escrow. With a fixed rate mortgage the interest and the principal parts are usually unchanged unless you make extra payments, but the PMI and/or the [...]

September 12, 2008

How come my monthly payment has shrunk, while the rate has increased?

I can think of three reasons for that. One of them or any combination of them could result in such an illogical at first glance situation: • You made an extra payment towards the principal some time ago and now it’s taking effect. The balance has become so low, that even a higher rate cannot [...]

August 13, 2008

What is the minimum down payment required to buy a home?

Actually, there is no limit to the size of a down payment. It can even be 0% with certain kinds of mortgages, but you have to be able to qualify for it.  Another tricky part here is the Mortgage Insurance. If your down payment is lower than 20% of the purchase price (or the appraised [...]

February 20, 2008

Lender-Paid Mortgage Insurance (LPMI)

Lender-Paid Mortgage Insurance (LPMI) is one of the ways, along with the Piggyback loan, to avoid the notorious conventional Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) if you borrow more than 80% of the purchase price while buying yourself a home. To be perfectly honest, you, as the borrower, are the one to pay this insurance anyway. The [...]

February 19, 2008

Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI)

If you are sure, that you will be able to put down at least 20% of the property purchase price, don’t bother to read this article – there is no way any lender should make you pay this insurance. Mortgage insurance is something that happens to you only if you cannot make a 20% down [...]