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Mortgage Refinancing: A Brave New World

February 3, 2010 •

We’re in the midst of refi­nanc­ing our home, to take advan­tage of the cur­rent attrac­tive rates. It’s been an eye-open­ing expe­ri­ence to see how the process has evolved since we last refi­nanced 5–8 years ago.

The lenders’ reliance upon web-based data col­lec­tion ser­vices has cer­tainly eased our bur­den, and saved us time in sup­ply­ing the needed infor­ma­tion. Inter­ac­tions with the loan pro­cess­ing agent take place by phone (or less sat­is­fac­to­rily, via an online doc­u­ment track­ing mech­a­nism.) We deliver fol­low-up doc­u­ments to the loan pro­cess­ing agent by scan­ning and email­ing them, or rarely, by fax­ing them. (I believe the lender’s inter­ac­tions with our insur­ance agents are still via fax…)

The last time we did this, fax­ing was the pri­mary data deliv­ery chan­nel. This time, fax­ing is a has­sle, as we no longer have a ded­i­cated fax line, and the fax machine is con­nected to a phone line on an excep­tional basis only. Scan­ning is more reas­sur­ing because we know what the doc­u­ment looks like before it gets sent.

The other huge ben­e­fit to this more tech­nol­ogy-savvy process is its speed: it took less than a week to go from the deci­sion, over break­fast on Sat­ur­day, to explore refi rates to the point at which we had received con­di­tional approval in writ­ing and a locked-in rate. The appraiser showed up 2 days later.

To our sur­prise our cur­rent lender did not offer an attrac­tive refi pack­age, despite our stel­lar track record at mak­ing pay­ments; their rate sched­ule on what con­sti­tutes “con­form­ing loan amounts” by county is years out of date. So they’re los­ing our busi­ness.

It’s a brave new world out there, for those lucky enough to qual­ify for refi­nanc­ing. The rates are cer­tainly attrac­tive.

About This Blog

Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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