Home-Wizard.com Guide to Mortgage Rate Maintenance including free automatic reminders

To ensure you are not missing opportunities to take advantage of lower mortgage rates, and that your mortgage is appropriate for your current financial situation, it is important that your home maintenance program include timely reviews of current mortgage rates.

Interest rates for mortgages go up and down depending on the state of the economy. When interest rates drop, you may have an attractive opportunity to re-finance (i.e., replace your current mortgage with a new mortgage) at a lower cost or at terms that better fit your financial situation. See also: Energy Rates, Energy Audits, Insurance Rates, Telephone Rates, Garbage Rates, Utility Meter Verification and Tax Assessment.

Shown below are the recommended routine maintenance tasks related to your mortgage.

Learn to enjoy managing your home with our free Newsletter or our free Automatic Maintenance Reminders. We can also show you the Recommended Maintenance Schedules for your entire home.


		Maintenance Task: Evaluate re-financing your mortgage

		How do you evaluate re-financing your home mortgage?
		To evaluate re-financing your mortgage, start by examining your current mortgage document. Look particularly for: the amount mortgaged interest rate rate adjustment features any penalties for early pay-off of your mortgage the length of the term of the mortgage Next, look at your payment statements to see how much remaining principle you still owe. Then contact various financial institutions and request quotes for re-financing your mortgage. If rates have dropped sufficiently, you may find that your mortgage payment could go down, and more than off-set the transaction cost of the re-financing (e.g. the "closing costs").

		Why is it important to evaluate re-financing your home mortgage?
		Re-financing can potentially save you interest costs for your mortgage, or provide you with financing that better fits your home financial situation.

		How often should you evaluate re-financing your home mortgage?
		If you are not in the habit of watching interest rates, you should at least check the rates once per year (February).

		How does Home-Wizard rate the costs and benefits for this task?
		The cost of this task is moderately low, from an investment of time standpoint. It is estimated that this task should take about 1-2 hours to complete the necessary research.

		The benefits of this task are are potentially high, depending on how much the market for mortgage rates have dropped since you set up your current mortgage.

		Overall Home-Wizard benefit-versus-cost rating (one 'hat' = low and four 'hats' = high):