Buying a house is the most expensive purchase most of us will ever make, so naturally, anything that can reduce the cost of a mortgage is worth looking at. Besides negotiating a good price and shopping for the best mortgage rates, some savvy homebuyers buy mortgage points, also called “discount points,” to lower the amount of interest they pay.
What are mortgage points?
Mortgage points are the fees a borrower pays a mortgage lender to trim the interest rate on the loan. This is sometimes called “buying down the rate.” Each point the borrower buys costs 1 percent of the mortgage amount. So, one point on a $300,000 mortgage would cost $3,000.
Each point typically lowers the rate by 0.25 percent, so one point would lower a mortgage rate of 4 percent to 3.75 percent for the life of the loan.
To learn more about mortgage points and the home buying process, visit the SCOOP! Blog
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