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you can put more down and lower your rate. but try to finance from a bank and preferably one that will keep your loan, in house. you can see face to face and talk to the head loan officer but see someone higher up. then you may get what you want.

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how do you control whether a bank sells off your mortgage or keeps it in house? are there certain banks that specify that they don't sell of mortgages?

i'd think that there is a cost to this too (at least until recently) since the bank that does sell off mortgages (assuming 1 does and 1 doesn't) will be able to attract more mortgage takers via lower rates since the risk of default isn't on that bank's books and thus can make up for margin via volume (it is just a servicing center rather than a credit appraiser and manager of the loans and thus has lower costs etc.).

cons are obviously what is going on now but not really from an individual(like the OP's)'s perspective.

thoughts?

Barron

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There are a lot of smaller local banks, savings and loans, and credit unions that are not conduit lenders (they don't sell their notes on Wall Street). Portfolio lenders keep their loans in house. Since they don't have to resell the loans, they can be much more flexible in their lending criteria. It is perfectly acceptable to ask the loan officer if the bank is a portfolio lender.

I work almost exclusively with portfolio lenders, mostly because I have a hard time getting loans from large conduit lenders since almost none of my deals are typical transactions. They also are much quicker because there are fewer levels of bureaucracy to get through (I've had several 7 day closings using portfolio lenders - ask your man a Bank of America or Chase for a 7 day closing and see what he says).

Anyways, in my experience, portfolio lenders will not tend to offer you lower rates per se, but you MIGHT be able to plead your case more effectively to them. You can't do that at Bank of America because their lending criteria is set by the ability to resell the loan later on.

OP,

you have to be reasonable too. Think about your situation from their position. I mean honestly, you are a guy that guy can't even figure out how to pay your credit cards, and you've shown poor judgement in asking irresponsbile people to take care of your bills for you. IMO, you are a higher risk, and therefore should pay more for borrowed money.

Also, don't forget that to refi will cost you a small chunk of change, like maybe 2,000-5,000 depending on the lenders involved.

I don't know if its better or worse if you wait to buy or not. I suspect that in the grand scheme the extra 1% won't make too much of a difference either way.