Since I didn’t have a baby like every one of my friends in the last year or so, the thing that most indicated I was now an adult was the act of buying a home. I guess more specifically, it was the act of going into massive amounts of debt that made me think I might actually be an adult now. Or is it that I’m still a child but with adult financial responsibilities? Anyways…
As I mentioned in a previous post, I started the process of getting a new mortgage to take advantage of a better interest rate. After a lot of legwork, my broker managed to lower my interest rate by 1.2%, which in my eyes is good. I believe I’m saving about $6000 in interest over five years. It’s not all fun and games though. I knew I’d have to pay a penalty to get out of my current mortgage. I was expecting to pay around $2000. My broker was able to whittle that down to $1100 or so. What I didn’t expect was to pay for another property assessment and lawyer fees. It’s the exact same mortgage company I’m using for my new mortgage. They did an assessment less than two years ago. How bad could have my apartment dropped in value? I suppose they have to do due diligence. I also didn’t realize we’d have to do legal paperwork again. I can understand why you’d need a lawyer to assist with the purchasing of a property but I’m just renewing my mortgage, can’t we leave the lawyers out of this? Can’t the mortgage underwriter do all that stuff?
When all is said and done, I’ll be paying well over $2000 to get a new mortgage. That doesn’t even include my own time that I need to spend while gathering up documents, seeing the lawyer, dealing with the home inspector, and signing a billion documents. All this work so that my mortgage payment is less than $650 a month. I suppose it’s worth it, right?