How to Refinance a Mortgage

If you’re considering refinancing your home loan, finding the best lender is probably at the top of your to-do list for the loan. Finding the best lender will help you get the lowest mortgage rate refinancing your loan. Here are several tips to help you get the best mortgage rate refinancing your home without paying commission based markup or junk fees.

Avoiding Commission Based Markup

If your goal for the new home loan is to get the lowest rate possible you’ll need to get a wholesale mortgage rate. The only way to get a wholesale mortgage rate is to find the right mortgage broker who is willing to give you access to wholesale rates for a reasonable fee. How do wholesale rates work? Only mortgage brokers have access to these rates; you’ll never get wholesale from bank, credit union, or broker bank.

The problem with using a mortgage broker to refinance your mortgage is that most brokers rely on commission based markup of your interest rate as a source of income. You’re already paying a perfectly reasonable origination fee for their services; why accept a higher mortgage rate just to give your mortgage broker a commission?

This commission based markup of your mortgage rate refinancing is called Yield Spread Premium and you’ll need to avoid this markup to get the lowest possible rate.

How do you get the best mortgage rate refinancing your home? Find a mortgage broker willing to work for a one percent origination fee without tacking Yield Spread Premium to your loan. These people are out there…they are typically self-employed mortgage brokers that run their own businesses without staff or posh offices. The key is to find a mortgage broker that doesn’t employ a sales staff. These brokers always split their commissions with their salespeople are will not typically negotiate over Yield Spread Premium. The same is true of a large brokerage house…the owner is always going to want their cut.

You can start your search by checking the website of the Upfront Mortgage Broker Association. (upfrontmortgagebrokers.org) Their website lists their members by Sate and all of the brokers agree to run their businesses by certain professional and ethical standards. When you contact these brokers ask them how long they’ve been originating loans. You’re looking for ten years or longer and someone that is the owner of their business. Make sure they close your loan in the name of the wholesale lender and not their own company. Brokers that close in their own companies name fund their own loans and are not required to disclose their profit margin or markup under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. This is the same reason you should never refinance your home loan with a Bank or Credit Union.

When addressing Yield Spread Premium, make sure your broker will not include this in your loan and is willing to show you the rate lock confirmation from the wholesale lender. This document provided by the lender is proof that your broker is not receiving Yield Spread Premium for marking up your rate. If the broker is unwilling to provide you this document he or she is hiding the fact that Yield Spread Premium is a part of your loan and cannot be trusted. You can learn more about getting the best mortgage rate refinancing your home and expensive pitfalls to avoid by registering for my free video tutorial.

If you’re in the process of refinancing your home you can save yourself thousands of dollars by getting a wholesale mortgage rate. The problem for many homeowners is that that they don’t know how get wholesale rates; most mortgage brokers would simply laugh at you if you told them “give me a wholesale mortgage rate.” Here are several tips to help you negotiate with mortgage brokers and find the right person to arrange your home loan.

Not Every Mortgage Broker Will Negotiate

The problem with negotiating with a broker is that not all brokers are in a position where they can negotiate. If you’re speaking to a salesperson from a large brokerage house they will probably not have the authority to negotiate for the terms you’re looking for. The reason for this is that the owner of the brokerage will be splitting the commission with the salesperson meaning you’ll always pay more than you have to with a mortgage broker in this situation.

This is also true of mortgage brokers that employ their own salespeople. Suppose for instance, you’re charged a one percent origination fee for your home loan. Your broker pockets this fee and will most often pay the salesperson from the Yield Spread Premium on your loan. Loan offers that don’t have origination fees are making up the difference often by doubling the amount of Yield Spread Premium on your loan. If you want a wholesale mortgage rate and plan on keeping your home for a long time you’ll need to avoid Yield Spread Premium completely.

If you’re not already familiar with this retail markup of your mortgage rate for a commission here is an article about the basics of Yield Spread Premium.

Self Employed Mortgage Brokers Are Best

It’s always better to work with the owner of the company you are dealing with. A self-employed mortgage broker that has been working for ten years or longer is the perfect candidate for arranging your mortgage. Working out of their home? Even better. One reason why working with a self employed mortgage broker is better is that they simply don’t have the overhead expenses that come with posh offices and support staff. A self employed mortgage broker is more likely to negotiate with you and agree to your terms for the loan.

What To Ask For When Refinancing

If you plan on keeping your home for the duration you’ll want to pay a one percent origination fee without any Yield Spread Premium on the loan. Some mortgage brokers argue that paying the origination fee will only raise your closing costs; however, agreeing to a higher mortgage rate that includes Yield Premium will result in a mortgage payment that could be as much hundreds of dollars higher per month than it has to be.

You can learn more about finding the right mortgage broker to arrange your loan by registering for my free video tutorial. Register today and you’ll learn how to refinance with a wholesale mortgage rate without paying garbage fees to your lender or broker.

The first thing you should know about getting the best deal when refinancing your home loan is that you cannot bypass the middleman to get a wholesale rate. It doesn’t matter which wholesale lender you try and contact when refinancing…every lender has retail divisions that deal with the public. Here are the basics you need to know to qualify for a wholesale mortgage rate when refinancing your home loan.

You’ll Have to Use a Broker

If you want wholesale rates there’s no way around working with a mortgage broker. Banks and credit unions never offer their customers wholesale rates and the big Internet lenders you see are simply banks pretending to be something they’re not. So what is a mortgage broker?

Mortgage brokers are simply loan originators that do not fund the loans they close with their own money. They are basically salespeople reselling mortgage loans for wholesale lenders. Your mortgage broker gets paid by charging you an “origination fee” and from a “rebate” paid by the wholesale lender. Lenders reward mortgage brokers for marking up the interest rate you qualified and closing your loan with above market rates. This rebate paid by the lender is called Yield Spread Premium and you’ll need to avoid it if you want to refinance with a wholesale rate.

How Yield Spread Premium Works

Suppose the mortgage you are refinancing is for $300,000. Your mortgage broker locks and closes your loan with a mortgage rate of 6.5%; however, what the broker doesn’t tell you is that you qualified for 6.0% mortgage rate. Because your mortgage broker locks and closes your home loan .5% higher than necessary this creates 2% of Yield Spread Premium for the broker. Your mortgage broker pockets $9,000 in addition to the fees you’re already paying for overcharging you.

Finding the right mortgage broker to originate your home loan without lining their pockets with Yield Spread Premium is a skill you can easily learn. Give me an hour of your time and I’ll show you how to refinance your home with a wholesale mortgage rate without paying garbage fees with free videos…Register for yours today.

Most homeowners know very little about how mortgage brokers are compensated for their work.

They assume that the origination fee listed on their Good Faith Estimate is the broker’s commission for the home loan; however, what you don’t know about mortgage broker fees could cost you a lot of money.

Here are several tips and questions to ask potential brokers to help you find the right professional to refinance your home loan.

The mortgage industry in the United States has a dirty little secret known as Yield Spread Premium. Mortgage brokers are very good at explaining away this fee as “lender paid” compensation; in other words it’s not coming out of your pocket so don’t worry about it. The problem with Yield Spread Premium, which is a percentage of your loan amount created when the broker locks and closes your home loan with an above market interest rate, is that it really is costing you money…thousands of dollars in unnecessary finance charges every year that you’ll pay as long as you keep that loan

Yield Spread Premium is a Lie

Your mortgage broker pockets a commission from the lender for marking up your mortgage interest rate. Sure this is listed on the HUD-1 statement as a “broker rebate” but if your broker doesn’t tell you they’ve marked up your interest rate for cash it’s still a lie of omission. Your mortgage broker receives one percent of your loan amount for every quarter percent they overcharge you. This “rebate” is paid in addition to any origination fees or mortgage broker fees you’re already paying.

Mortgage Refinancing Done Right

Another problem faced by the majority of homeowners refinancing their mortgages is that they don’t know what a good deal looks like. The ideal transaction between a homeowner and a mortgage broker is a loan with zero Yield Spread Premium, no garbage fees, and a one percent origination fee. Think that this sounds too good to be true? It’s not if you know how to find the right mortgage broker to originate your loan.

Questions to Ask Your Mortgage Broker

Before you agree to anything with a mortgage broker there are several pointed questions you need to be asking:

Honest mortgage brokers willing to work for a one point origination fee do exist and finding a broker like this will save you thousands of dollars and countless headaches when refinancing your home. You can learn more about getting a wholesale mortgage rate while avoiding lender junk fees by registering for my free mortgage video tutorial.

You might be asking yourself “What the heck is a Broker Bank?” Most people have never heard of broker banks…in fact, prior to 1999 they didn’t exist. Here are the basics that every homeowner needs to know about Mortgage Broker Banks when refinancing a home loan.

Before the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act was amended to require mortgage brokers to disclose their profit margins made from locking and closing mortgages with above market rates, banks were losing a large portion of their profits to mortgage brokers.

The Banking Lobby decided to do something about this and spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress to have the disclosure laws changed; their goal was to gain an unfair advantage in the marketplace by requiring mortgage brokers to disclose the commission based markup of your mortgage interest rate.

What is a Broker Bank?

The banking lobby succeeded in having the law changed and of course banks are exempt from this new disclosure legislation. This change in the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act sent mortgage brokers scrambling to take advantage of the same loophole exploited by banks. All a mortgage broker had to do was fund their own loans like a bank which would allow them to close in the name of their company instead of a wholesale lender…hence the Broker Bank was born.

The only reason a mortgage company or broker would choose to operate as a broker bank is to hide their markup of your mortgage interest rate. If you refinance your home with a bank or broker bank you’ll never know mortgage rate you could have had with an honest lender.

How to Recognize a Broker Bank

Banks are easy to spot; however, when it comes to recognizing broker banks things can get a little fuzzy unless you know what to look for. First of all, broker banks love to brag about doing their loans “in house.” The best way to find out if your mortgage broker is acting as a broker bank is to ask if they close in the name of the wholesale lender. If the answer you get is “no” and they are closing in their own companies name then you know with 100% certainty that they are a broker bank and cannot be trusted with your mortgage.

Beware Bank Wholesale Divisions

One of my readers emailed me that she was working with a broker for a loan through Wachovia. Her broker convinced her that this was okay because the lender wasn’t Wachovia directly, but their “wholesale division” known as Vertice. The problem with this logic is that the bank controls their wholesale division and the rate sheets provided to mortgage brokers from Vertice include the markup. On top of this the banks salespeople do not have the authority to negotiate for lower rates. Banks have enormous overhead they must cover and rely on overcharging to make a profit. This is true of every bank originated mortgage loan on the market today.

Do you think my reader paid too much for her mortgage refinancing with Wachovia? Absolutely…she never signed up for the free mortgage videos I offer and will pay thousands of dollars too much. It always amazes me why people don’t take advantage of a free product that will not only save them thousands of dollars in unnecessary finance charges but show them how to avoid garbage fees as well. Similar products sell for hundreds of dollars and don’t offer half as much insider mortgage scoop that I give away free every day. I guess the old saying is true…you can lead a horse (in some cases a goat) to water, but you can’t make her drink.

If you’d like to learn how to refinance your mortgage with a wholesale rate without paying lender and broker garbage fees, register for my free video tutorial.