“Float-downs are not uncommon, but folks have to ask about them,” Gumbinger says. Though the feature usually requires a fee-perhaps $500-it can save you big if interest rates retreat. With this option, your mortgage rate drops before closing if interest rates fall-even if you’ve already locked in the rate. Refer to Zillow’s checklist of what’s usually required.Īsk each lender about a “float down” option on your mortgage, says Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH, a mortgage information website based in Riverdale, N.J. Ensure that this part of the process proceeds seamlessly by having all your essential paperwork in hand. Once you start filling out loan applications, you’ll be expected to verify many aspects of your financial and personal life. Are you just starting to shop for a home, or do you have an accepted offer or a signed contract? You’ll also need to tell the lender where you are in the process. If you want a quote that could lead to a firm offer, you’ll need to give the lender your Social Security number.īefore you start looking at lenders, decide what kind of home you’re interested in and the type of mortgage you want. We found that you can get pretty accurate estimates over the phone. Wells Fargo was offering a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with an APR of 4.625 percent. (Freddie Mac, the quasi-government agency that buys and bundles mortgages and sells them to investors, put the current average 30-year fixed-rate at slightly below 5 percent.)Īnother option is to find a phone number on the lender’s website and call directly. When we did that, we quickly found lower rates at various banks. Bankrate’s average mortgage rates, gleaned from among more than 100 banks, averaged 4.88 percent, but online mortgage broker Morty was advertising a 30-year fixed loan with an annual percentage rate (APR) of 4.285 percent. You can also go to Bankrate to compare mortgage rates and find the best deals. Go to their websites and fill out preliminary forms to get interest rate estimates immediately or calls from company representatives who can quickly get quotes for you. Shop for a mortgage at a variety of lenders, including banks mortgage brokers online originators, such as Quicken Loans and aggregators, like LendingTree. Here are the steps you should take to find the lowest-priced loan available. But McBride and others say there’s still plenty of appetite in the real estate market, so if you want to stay in the game, you’ll need tactics to get the best mortgage possible. Those higher rates, spurred by inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, and recent moves by the Federal Reserve, might be enough to deter some would-be home shoppers-especially when combined with an average 32.3 percent increase in home prices since last year, as reported by Zillow.
“It’s akin to a 17 percent increase in home prices, just since January.”
“This has been the fastest and sharpest run-up in mortgage rates in 28 years,” says Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate, a financial information website. And that rate is 1.75 percentage points higher than it was at the beginning of the year. That’s an interest rate not seen since 2011, save for a couple of days in 2018. With mortgage interest rates hitting heights not seen for years, home buyers are going to have to think and act more strategically than ever to get a deal on that all-important loan, experts say.Īverage 30-year fixed mortgages recently exceeded 5 percent, according to Mortgage News Daily, which tracks daily, real-time changes in lenders’ rates.
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