When figuring out how to refinance your underwater mortgage, be sure to look into the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP 2.0).
Q: I enjoy your free weekly newsletter and Ilyce’s Sunday show.
I have a 6 percent mortgage with my lender on a rental property that has a balance of $75,000. The current value is about $30,000. I can’t qualify to refinance with a conventional lender. Is there anything I can do to get my lender to lower the interest rate on this loan?
I have made every payment since I bought it in 2007.
A: There is no lender that will do a traditional refinance of a property (rental or owner occupied) that is 50 percent underwater – or even 10 percent underwater. What you’d need to do is have the property qualify under the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP 2.0).
While not all lenders do HARP refinances of rental properties, the good news is that your lender does offer some HARP 2.0 refinances of rental properties. But, you do have to qualify under the MakingHomeAffordable.gov rules.
In short, the mortgage on your rental property must be owned or guaranteed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. In addition, the mortgage must have been sold to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac on or before May 31, 2009. The mortgage for your rental property cannot have been refinanced under HARP previously unless it is a Fannie Mae loan that was refinanced under HARP from March-May, 2009.
The current loan-to-value (LTV) ratio must be greater than 80 percent (not a problem for you, since your loan-to-value ratio is about 160 percent). Finally, you must be on time with your mortgage payments, with an on-time mortgage payment history over the past twelve months (also not a problem for you, since you’ve always made on-time payments).
If your loan doesn’t qualify, then you’re at the mercy of your lender. Sometimes, lenders will modify loans or adjust the interest rate simply so that they can keep customers who pay on time. But sometimes they won’t. If your lender won’t modify your refinance, then you’re stuck with the loan you have, unless you have $40,000 in cash to bring the outstanding balance into parity with the value of the property.
The problem with that is most lenders will want to see at least 25 percent equity in a rental property. And if you pay down the loan that much, you’ll have a difficult time finding a lender who will refinance a $25,000 loan.
The silver lining is that the mortgage rate on your rental property is 6 percent, and if you were able to do a HARP refinance, you’d only be able to knock that down a half a percent, or maybe slightly more. What we’re hearing is that HARP refinancings are running about one percent above the best 30-year fixed-rate mortgage programs, or about 4.5 percent. The interest rate for rental properties is usually a half percent to one percent higher or more. And, then you’d add lender fees on top of that.
Don’t get us wrong: Any savings is good money you’d rather put in your pocket. But your real rate of savings might be only as much as one percent on a $75,000 loan. Perhaps that amount is less than you imagined.
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My son and daughter-in-law are underwater with an ARM loan and Wells Fargo refuses to do anything to get them a fixed loan without starting a new mortgage loan. For the 1st 3 years of their six year mortgage they were paying almost 9% on an ARM loan. They have benefited in the last 3 years with the ARM loan but they would prefer to get a low fixed rate for the 19-year duration on their current loan. Their mortgage is not guaranteed by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. Can they still get a HARP loan? They are current with their payments. They did fill out a Request for Mortgage Assistance with Wells Fargo but the paperwork was never ending (WF was always requesting additional info.) which was supplied and for some reason the RFMA was never processed. Are there any options other than trying to get mortgage assistance with WF? I wrote a lengthy letter to the president of WF pleading for help and he sent my letter to the complaint dept. and all our pleas and suggestions were rejected.