My Thirty Second Public Service Announcement On Mortgage Loans (UPDATED)

I usually write medium-long articles, Part of that is because I've done all of the easy subjects, part because sound bites facilitate sloganeering, not serious thought that's likely to result in a better answer - or the realization that you've been wrong in the past.

But long articles take a lot of time (not that short ones are easy, as Mark Twain knew well). So I've been trying to come up with ideas for short articles, and one of the things I came up with was: Pack a list of the most important things consumers need to know about mortgage loans, as packed into the words I can say in thirty seconds without sounding like an over-clocked squirrel.

Here goes:

There is always a tradeoff between rate and cost. Never choose a loan based upon payment or APR. Shop by the cost of money and what you get - not by how much somebody is making. People refinance about every three years, so the higher rate may be better.

Ask the right questions of every lender. Lenders can legally lowball you on the initial paperwork, and this isn't changing. The new disclosure rules were intended to make this more difficult but failed, while the new market rules make it impossible to get a guarantee that means anything at sign up, and not even I can do back up loans anymore. Now more than ever, you need to have a real problem solving type discussion with prospective loan officers, rather than quote shopping, because what someone tells you to get you to sign up may have no relationship to what they actually deliver.

How'd I do?

I recommend this guy for loans ;-)

Caveat Emptor

This has been significantly altered from a prior article found here