San Diego Real Estate | Re-Casting Your Mortgage

San Diego Real Estate | Re-Casting Your Loan

For those that are having difficulty refinancing their home loans, there may be yet another tool in the lenders arsenal that is little known or discussed. For the homeowners that have actually regularly paid their mortgage principal far ahead by making principal reduction payments and built a lot of equity by significantly paying down their principal  but who now may be having difficulty meeting their high payments, there may be answer.

Some lenders can offer an instrument that is very often overlooked because it is not readily known about nor spoken of very often, if at all. It is called mortgage recasting and you can think of it as a mortgage re-amortization.

Some lenders don't offer this product and for some loans it is simply not available. The problem is , if the mortgagor doesn't know about it or doesn't know to ask about it , there is a great likelihood that no one will even mention this to the owner of the note.

The best way to think of it is as a safety net. This is not a refinance product and as such there are typically no closing costs but rather a low cost fee usually in the range of a couple hundred dollars. It works like a re-amortization in that the current loan balance is re-spread out over the remaining period of the original loan. Assuming that the principal has been reduced significantly or will be during the recasting process, it then take the new lower principal and spreads it out over the original term of the loan. With fixed rate loan, any significant reduction of the principal would only shorten the term of the loan and not the payments. If for example there is 20 years left of the original 30 year loan and the principal is now reduced with a significant payment, a re-casting of the mortgage  spreads your lowered principal balance over the remaining term, thus reducing the payments. If a significant payment was made it does not change the interest rate. That would require a refinance of the loan and obligates the borrower to significant closing costs but the borrower could likely save a lot on the lowered interest rates.

But if the mortgagor can't qualify under today's current guidelines for a refinance, this might be a good avenue to explore for lowering payments. The mortgagor must check with their lender to see if the product is available. Again, not all lenders offer this product.

As an alternative to refinance, this product could be a benefit to both the mortgagor and the lender. Beneficial to the lender that might loose the current loan to a refinance and risk losing the borrower . It can certainly be beneficial to some mortgagors if the budget needs cut to survive these difficult economic times and especially if the mortgagor has significantly reduced the loan principal. Typically this might done where the morgagor might have used significant cash reserves earning a low interest rate and significantly reduced the principle balance of a mortgage where the interest would much higher.

Editiorial: I had made an error in this post that the re-casting would spread the balance over the original term of the loan. A re-casting spreads the principle balance over the remianing term of the loan. Sorry for that error.

I offer this as information only and not as financial advice, nor do I know what lenders may offer this product. Any interested morgagor must contact their financial adviser or their lender to get specific information as to if any such product could benefit them or would even pertain to their particular mortgage.