Want the Lowest Mortgage Rates with No Closing Costs?
So, today you would like to find the lowest mortgage rate. Difficult? Sure it is. Just look at any advertisement online or in print and see if you can decipher all the available mortgage rate quotes and legal advertising mumbo jumbo.
Let’s now take it one step further. You want to find not only the lowest mortgage rate but also find the one with no closing costs. How do you navigate such a task? Let’s take it one step at a time and look at the types of interest rate and closing cost scenarios you might encounter.
Our Philosophy
At Poli Mortgage Group, we specialize in the No Points and No Closing Cost Loan.
Why is that? Well, there are a few reasons.
- We are firm believers that our customers are happier when they aren't asked to pay a mountain of fees, we just don't believe in it.
- We are a Direct Lender, as a Lender, we are afforded much more flexibility than most of our competition, we pass this on to our clients.
- We understand the math. When a customer pays closing costs he is locked into that loan for quite some time, if rates plummet, you're not in position to take advantage. In recent years, if you want a lower rate, wait a minute. Rates just keep heading down, even when everyone thinks they won't go any lower.
- We will monitor your loan internally and the second you can save money with another No Points and No Closing Costs mortgage, we let you know. You don't have to worry or follow complex markets.
How Do No Closing Cost Loans Work?
A lender will have its own fees that are associated with obtaining a mortgage loan, be it for a purchase or a refinance. These fees are ones that the lender requires but may or may not be charged directly by the lender.
For example, a lender will require an appraisal as part of the mortgage approval process. Yet the lender doesn’t actually perform the appraisal. A licensed appraiser does that. Same with a credit report; a lender requires a credit report, yet doesn’t specifically produce the credit report, the credit reporting agency does.
There are however other direct lender charges that the lender does in fact control. Most often you’ll find these fees listed as an “underwriting” charge which helps to offset the overhead the lender invests when approving the mortgage loan. A “processing” fee is a common lender-directed charge that is applied towards the costs associated with documenting and preparing the loan application for a loan approval.
Then there are third party fees which the lender has absolutely no control over. These fees might be for homeowners insurance that your insurance agent provides. Or an attorney’s fee that is applied towards reviewing loan papers or preparing a closing.
When considering how to find a low mortgage rate with little or no closing costs you need to identify which charges might be negotiated with your lender and which ones cannot. Obviously, third party charges such as insurance or attorney fees cannot be reduced directly by the lender. And while you may certainly contact the insurance agent and the attorney and negotiate directly, typically these charges may not be up for negotiation. They will be what they will be.
But there is a way to reduce or eliminate closing costs and that way is to slightly adjust your interest rate.
When you get a rate quote, you will be given a choice of what is called a “par” rate, or one with no discount points, and lower rates with discount points attached. A discount point, or point, is represented as one percent of the loan amount. A rate of 4.50% might be available with one point while a rate of 4.75% might be available with zero points. In other words, paying one point can reduce your mortgage rate typically by .25%. And the more points you pay the lower rate you can get.
Yet the opposite is also true. If you increase your mortgage rate by .25% from the par rate, or the rate with no points, the lender can help offset many or even all of your closing costs. And just as you can decrease your rate by .25% by paying one point a lender might have one point available to apply to your closing costs in exchange for the slightly higher rate.
If your loan amount is $400,000 and your lender quotes you a rate of say, 4.50% with no points, you might also get a quote of 4.75% with a lender credit of $3,000 to be applied towards your closing costs. insurance, attorney fee and so on.
This approach works for both purchase as well as refinance transactions.
So how do you find the lowest mortgage rates with no closing costs?
Simple, when shopping for your mortgage rate always be sure to ask for a rate with no closing costs. It’s often that you’ll find a mortgage company that doesn’t offer this option nor truly understands the potential benefit a no closing cost loan offers. You'll find that a lender that is the most competitive with their rates at “par” is likely the lowest when searching for a “no closing cost loan”.
It is often the case that a slightly lower mortgage rate with its associated closing costs is not low enough to offset the costs required to obtain the mortgage, so explore the no closing cost option. The decision is made in the math and is not something that you need to be “persuaded” to take, so run the numbers.
You might very well be glad you did!
