October 30, 2008
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 example, the penalty for prepaying [...]
October 26, 2008
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 mortgage contract, states that [...]