How to Choose the Best Home Mortgage for You
- 1). Look carefully at your current financial situation. Try to determine what your financial picture will look like over the next several years.
- 2). Study interest rates to get a sense of where they are headed. The Wall Street Journal, Barron's (printed on Sunday only) and some of the better Sunday newspapers have comparative interest rate information for the last year.
- 3). Determine how much you will be putting down on your house and how much you can afford to pay monthly.
- 4). Decide how long you expect to be in the house. If you expect to stay for only a few years, look at ways to reduce the down payment and to keep the closing costs and points as low as possible. (A point is one percent of the amount of your loan; buyers generally have to pay a certain number of points as part of their closing costs.) If you plan to stay for several years, it's more important to get the lowest interest rate you can.
- 5). Understand the differences between the mortgage choices available - fixed, adjustable rate (ARM) and balloon (see "How to Decide Between a Fixed and Adjustable Rate Mortgage").
- 6). Decide which is more important to you now and over the long run: having a steady, constant mortgage payment, or paying the lowest initial rate with the possibility that your mortgage payment could rise.
