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When borrowing money for a mortgage, homebuyers are primarily concerned with simply qualifying. Still, paying attention to the length of the loan is a borrowing tip that can save you a ton of money.

Home Loans

In the mortgage industry, the length of your loan used to be the only major issue you had to deal with. How times have changed! In the current market, the variety of loans that exist are simply stunning. Of course, the massive increase in loan options has inevitably led to massive confusion.

Borrowing Tip

Regardless of the type of loan you go with, you should always try to keep your loan term as short as possible. The shorter the loan period, the less you will pay in interest. Here an example using 15 and 30 year loans.

Assume our first homebuyer gets a 100,000 loan at 8 percent interest. He length of the loan is 30 years with a monthly payment of 733.76. For this mortgage, our homebuyer is going to pay 164,155.25 in interest over the life of the loan.

Now, take the same scenario, but reduce the term of the loan to 15 years. Our homebuyer is going to see the monthly payment bumped to 955.65 per month. Over the length of the loan, our homebuyer is going to pay 90,000 less in interest payments over the life of the loan. On top of this, the house will be paid off in half the time.

When borrowing money for a home purchase, you have to carefully budget your finances. If you can afford increased monthly payments, however, a shorter loan length is going to save you a lot of money over time.

Mortgage Advice: Home Equity Loans Can Finance an Investment Properties and Second Homes

The idea of owning investment real estate seems to be gaining popularity as investors are getting tired of the unreliable stock market. Many investors feel confident with real estate as a place to secure their future, believing that overall it will outperform cash, fixed interest deposits and other investments, particularly for the medium to long term. Second homes account for a full 40% of all homes sold in America. According to a recent annual report by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 27.7% of all homes purchased in 2005 were investment properties and 12.2% were vacation homes.

If you are considering either an investment in income producing real estate or a vacation home, it is generally better to cash out the equity in your home rather than to move cash from other investments which are doing well for you. If you’ve been paying on your mortgage for more than five years and the interest rate is below market rate, a home equity loan would probably work better for you than a mortgage refinance. And, a home equity line of credit (HELOC) could be your best answer for your second home purchase or other real estate investment.

There are generally no closing costs with HELOCs, as opposed to home equity installment loans (HEILs). HELOCs typically have a lower interest rate than credit cards or installment loans, and they offer a lot of flexibility in features and payback options, including:

Interest-only loan payment option (based on prime rate1 + a fixed margin).
Choose to pay only the minimum, or pay down your balance and have it available for you to use again and again for on-going maintenance of the property.
10, 15, or 25-year terms available with the option to extend the equity line of credit, rather than having to apply for a new loan, if there is still an account balance at the end of the loan term.
Borrow up to 100% of property value and pay interest on only the amount you use.
Lines of credit from 20,000 up to 250,000.

A property portfolio can provide healthy long-term capital gains, appreciating assets and cash flow from rent to add to your retirement income. In addition, the interest paid on a home equity line of credit is generally fully deductible (up to a maximum of 100,000), provided the loan does not exceed the fair market value less the outstanding mortgage.

1 Prime rate is the rate published each day in The Wall Street Journal (but not the Weekend Edition of The Wall Street Journal).

An astonishing 80 per cent of home buyers now conduct at least part of their home search on the Internet. In response to this influx of surfing home buyers, there is now a large number of free mortgage loan calculators available online. All of these calculators share basic core functions and some of them include additional features. But they all can provide valuable insight as you navigate the home mortgage process. Let’s take a look at some of the different types of free mortgage loan calculators available online, and see how we can put them to best use.

Monthly Payments

All free mortgage loan calculators are able to calculate monthly mortgage payments. All you have to do is enter your total mortgage amount and the length of the mortgage, along with the interest rate and the starting date of the mortgage. The calculator will take this information and show you the amount of your monthly mortgage payments.

Some free mortgage loan calculators include an additional feature that will let you calculate the beneficial impact of making extra payments on your mortgage. By entering additional monthly or annual amounts, or adding a one-time payment, you can predict how much earlier your loan pay-off date could occur.

Amortization

Free mortgage loan calculators can also help you figure out your amortization schedule. Whether or not your amortization schedule is based on prepayments, free mortgage loan calculators will help you compute the amount of a monthly payment.

Free mortgage loan calculators determine this by basing their calculations on your data: the principal amount borrowed, loan term, and the annual interest rate. Once the free mortgage loan calculator computes your monthly payment based on this data, you can then create the amortization schedule report.

Bi-Weekly Mortgage

Free mortgage loan calculators can also help you with your bi-weekly mortgage calculations. Making bi-weekly mortgage payments is a relatively painless way to pay additional amounts on your mortgage, saving you interest and shortening the mortgage term. Several free mortgage loan calculators can calculate what your bi-weekly payments will be and show you the amount of interest you will save.

To calculate your bi-weekly payments, total interest, and average interest each bi-weekly period, you will need to input into the free mortgage loan calculator the principal loan balance, the annual interest rate and the amortization. This should be enough for the tool to compute your savings on interest and monthly payments.

Scenarios

Here’s where the free mortgage loan calculators start to get interesting. They help you answer the “what if” questions. You can compare different scenarios to see which course of action leads to the most desirable outcome. For example, you can figure out how the size of your down payment can affect your monthly mortgage payments.

Missing Variable

Free mortgage loan calculators can also help you determine missing variables of a loan. For instance, you can find out how much money you would have to earn in order to afford one.

There are many very good free mortgage loan calculators available online, each equipped with different functions. Just enter “free mortgage loan calculator” in your favorite search engine, and you’ll be rewarded with millions of choices. Explore, compare, and find one you’re comfortable using. It will become your tireless advisor, providing the answers you need for a good home mortgage decision.