If you have a 250K mortgage at 4.25% interest for 25 years, the monthly payment is 1349. If you pay 2698, the mortgage will be paid in 10 years . Check with your bank on how much you are allowed to increase your principal and interest payments as not all bank allow 100% monthly payment increase.

Hello Stanko. Not all lenders will allow you to double up your mortgage payment so make sure it is one of the mortgage options outlined in the pre-payment privileges portion of your original mortgage agreement or call the bank directly. The advantage of course is that you will pay your mortgage much quicker. You could reduce a 30 year amortization to 10 years by doubling up each and every payment. The interest savings would be huge in that case. Even making one extra payment each year would result in 4-6 years shorter mortgage repayment, this will also save you thousands. The biweekly accelerated payment schedule does exactly that. You pay 1/2 the monthly payment every 2 weeks. 26 biweekly payments will mean the equivalent to 13 monthly payments per year! The best part about the accelerated payment program is that you don`t really notice that extra money you have put on your mortgage because it doesn`t come out all at once. I hope this helps! If you or any reader would like some more information please do no hesitate to contact me at any time. Abraham Niyazi - Mortgage Agent - Lic#M08010640 - Centum One FInancial Corp - Lic 10758. Cell: 416-993-4082 Toll Free: 1-866-728-3708 x 115 http://www.centum.ca/abraham_niyazi/ I deal with 25 lenders and can do mortgages across Canada except Quebec.

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In short, here is my situation. i am married and have 3 sons. we just recently bought a new bigger house but our previous home is not selling as fast as we wanted. so, now i am paying 2 mortgage payments, double utilities and trying to support my wife and 3 kids on 1 income, mine. we have no money for anything, any advice on getting through this crunch would be helpful. should i try to rent the other house instead of selling?

i would definitely try to rent out your other house...it will be tough for a few months but slowly it will become easier to manage...

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Does paying more each month help reduce the final cost of paying off a house loan? will it get paid off faster? or will it just go to interest and be a waste? also, if i do pay more each month do i get ahead for the upcoming months if i were to miss a payment in the future would they consider that i am ahead of schedule?

Direct your extra payments to be for the principal on your mortgage only and that will dramatically pay your loan off faster.

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Hi, i have a 99k mortgage........ evey year i have payed a additional 12k down onto the principal amount at the end of the year, a what they call a mortgage anveristy payment(a free payment of up to 15 percent of your mortgage) as of right now my mortgage is about 42 k left i have about 10 k right now saved , instead of putting the 12k down should i try to put like 20k down this year pay a little bit of a fee on top of that or should i go double payments, i dont no what to do i just want out of this mortgage fastest way i can. should i want till 2011 than i have to re do my mortgage rate, and i can go for a 5 year please help high rate its 5.25 its not that bad

I'm not from the UK so I do not entirely understand your question. The part I do think I understand is whether you should make double payments or a lump sum applied only to the principle. If I am correct, you will be much better off applying a lump sum to the principal. The less the principle, the less interest is charged. If you make double payments you could pay off your mortgage sooner but you will not be saving one dime in interest; I hope I answered at least a portion of your question.

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Have 42 k left should i make lump sum payments of 10 k next 4 years or double my payments

Before you prepay, make sure that you have plenty of cash in an emergency fund. Once you have this, pay off $10K at the beginning of the year for 4 years. This will reduce the amount of interest you pay on the mortgage.

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My mortgage rep told me that the amortization period you choose is not set in stone, and that at any time during the term you can decrease or increase the amortization period (which of course would impact your monthly payments). i was aware that you could pay off mortgages faster by doubling up payments and making lump sum payments, etc. but i didn't think the amortization period was as flexible as she described it. she said it didn't matter which amortization period i chose, that i could change it in the middle of the term and she would simply recalculate the payments. she added that by law you have 35 years to pay back a mortgage in canada and that the amortization period and the deadline for load repayment were two different things. can anyone comment on this?

The rules in Canada may be different than the US. If you take out a mortgage, the Principal, interest and time to pay off the note and the monthly payments are set in concrete. You have to arrange a refinance to change any of the terms. The time to pay off the loan is the MAXIMUM time allowed to pay off the note. In the US, you can pay additional monies on your mortgage. The additional money is directly applied to the principal. That will save you interest and eventually cause an early pay off on the loan effectively shortening the time of pay off. That's the only flexibility available.

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I have friends who bought a home in 2006 for $275,000. they obtained conventional financing with 10% down and were making their mortgage payments. the subsequent real estate meltdown from zero-down-pay-what-you-want loans destroyed the value of their property. their lender refused to even discuss loan modification. they walked away figuring their credit would recover faster than the real estate market. their old house is now on the market for $95,000. they would have been happy with a mortgage at double that valuation with no interruption in revenue or foreclosure costs to the lender. it makes no sense to me. any insider input? there's more to it than personal responsibility. banks and mortgage brokers hawked unjustified loans to naive buyers. other buyers took advantage of an opportunity to buy property they knew they couldn't afford. countrywide ceo angelo mozillo made millions building the real estate house of cards and walked away when it collapsed. this doesn't change the basic question. jeffrey- thanks for your response. when my friends contacted their lender they were told they needed to miss three payments before the lender (countrywide) would talk to them. their response, "okay, if that's what you want." it made no difference. they missed six payments. still no difference. they consulted a real estate attorney and walked away. they now rent a nice home for $900/month less than their old mortgage payment and invest the difference. in seven years when their credit recovers they'll have close to $90k-$100k to get back into the market.

Banks holding people responsible? Hah! It's the real estate agents, banks and investment brokers that caused the whole problem in the first place. There were commissions to be made selling real estate to people on the fantasy of ever spiraling values, millions in fees to be made granting worthless mortgages and millions more in bundling these mortgages into worthless investments. Then the government takes our tax money to bail out the fat cats. Evidently there just isn't enough money to be made modifying mortgages. There must be more profit in taking bailout money and using current financial market conditions to screw credit card holders.

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I bought my home in 2004 & as with everyone else my home's value has plummeted down to almost nothing. i have a conventional loan with a 1st and 2nd mortgage (arm). the origional amount i paid was ok but then the mtg co added taxes and another insurance to the payment raising it to almost double on the 1st mtg. i havent paid he 2nd mtg since october and the 1st mtg since april. i've tried talking to my mortgage company re loan modification and they lowered the interest to 5.5% and my payments only went down $7.00. i bought my house for $72,000 and now owe $92,000 between the 1st and 2nd mortgage!! other houses in my neighborhood are only selling for $3500.00 and $8000.00. i am a single parent i need direction, i work and i want to keep my house . are there any suggstions?

Have you tried http://www.makinghomeaffordable.gov to see if you are eligible for the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae Refinance programs? I don't know if you are being as you are late on your payments, however. It's worth a shot. Wow...your mortgage company sure helped you out with that $7.00/month. I'm sorry :(

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Government has been the principal factor preventing the “affordable housing” that politicians talk about so much. amid all the hand-wringing and fingerpointing as housing markets collapse, mortgage foreclosures skyrocket, and financial markets panic, there is very little attention being paid to the fundamental economic and political decisions that led to this mess. the growth in risky “sub-prime” mortgage loans by people buying homes they could not really afford has been a key factor in the collapse of housing markets, when the risks caught up with both borrowers and lenders. but why were home buyers suddenly taking out so many risky loans and lenders suddenly arranging so much “creative” financing for these borrowers? one clue is the concentration of such risky behavior in particular places and times. interest-only mortgages, where nothing is being paid on the principal for the first few years, enable many people to get started on buying a home with lower mortgage payments at the outset. but of course it is only a matter of time before the mortgage payments go up and, unless their income has gone up enough in the meantime for them to be able to afford the new and higher payments, such borrowers can end up losing their homes. such risky mortgage loans were rare just a few years ago. as of 2002, fewer than 10 percent of the new mortgages in the united states were of this type. but, by 2006, 31 percent of all new mortgages were of this “creative” or risky type. in the san francisco bay area, 66 percent of the new mortgages were of this type. why this difference in times and places? because housing prices were skyrocketing in some places and times, so that people of modest incomes had to go out on a limb to buy a house, if they expected to buy a house at all. but why were housing prices going up so fast, in the first place? a number of studies of communities across the united states and in countries overseas turned up the same conclusion: government restrictions on building. while many other factors can be involved — rising incomes, population growth, construction costs — a scrutiny of the times and places where housing prices doubled, tripled, or quadrupled within a decade shows that restrictions on building have been the key. attractive and heady phrases like “open space,” “smart growth,” and the like have accompanied land use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point where it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land. in places that resisted this political rhetoric, home prices remained reasonable, despite rising incomes and population growth. construction costs were seldom a major factor, for there was relatively little construction in places with severe building restrictions and skyrocketing home prices. in short, government has been the principal factor preventing the “affordable housing” that politicians talk about so much. politicians have also been a key factor behind pushing lenders to lend to borrowers with lower prospects of being able to repay their loans. the community reinvestment act lets politicians pressure lenders to lend to people they might not lend to otherwise — and the same politicians are quick to cry “exploitation” when the interest charged to high-risk borrowers reflects that risk. the huge losses of sub-prime lenders, some of whom have gone bankrupt, demonstrate again the consequences of letting politicians try to micromanage the economy. yet with all the fingerpointing in the media and in government, seldom is a finger pointed at the politicians at local, state, and national levels who have played a key role in setting up the conditions that led to financial disasters for individual home buyers and for those who lent to them. while financial markets are painfully adjusting and both lenders and borrowers are becoming less likely to take on so much risky “creative” financing in the future, politicians show no sign of changing. why should they, when they have largely escaped blame for the disasters that their policies fostered?

Well said. Everyone is pointing the finger at the poor smucks who were force to buy beyond their means for the reason you stated. It's all their fault, and those who created the situation gat away blameless. I was invested in a home builder but got out before the crash. As you said, the land this builder was building homes on appreciated at a rate of 50% in the time it took to build. All the profit was in flipping the land, not building the homes.

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Last time i checked my score was a 620. i have enough to put half the purchase price for down payment on a house is it possible to get a loan for the other half i do not care what the interest rate would be because i make enough money to pay above what the monthly payment would be to pay the loan off faster and i only want the loan for 15 yrs. either way the payments would be cheaper than rent at this point. my credit has charge offs and write offs due to a lay off 8 yrs ago which caused me to lose everything. paying back the debt is not an option because i consulted with an attorney about filling bankruptcy which i was unable to do because i had to much in liquid assests and he told me not to file,and not try and repay the debt (1) because i would go broke trying and that is stupid,and (2) because they have already been written off which means they have filed it as a loss on taxes so it would be double dipping . the main thing that shows up on my credit is a repo from 8 yrs ago it was auctioned off and they have never contacted me nor came after me regarding any excess amount owed but it still shows up on the credit report as well as all the other crap i lost. i was under the impression that after 7-10 yrs all the stuff is supposed to come off your credit anyways,so why is it still showing everything from the beginning of my credit history to now? some of the stuff is 10 yrs and older(older being the good payment history) i even got a credit card to start a payment history a yr ago and that was how i got my credit score up to the 600's it was worse. i just want to purchase a home i don't want to be stupid and buy up a bunch of other stuff on credit i just want to get a house , and pay cash for everything else that way if something were to ever happen again and i lose another job i will never be back in the position i was in before. is it possible to get a loan with my credit history if i pay for half the value of the house up front?

Unfortunately it is going to be really hard to get a mortgage at this point for you. First of all, your credit score of 620 is not good enough for a bank to approve a mortgage. But beyond that, you have a lot of unpaid debt. I actually think you got pretty bad advice from your attorney. Just because debt is charged off, does not mean that you can't repay it and have your accounts marked paid in full. Even though my sense is that your score would hurt you, bank prefer to see paid off accounts rather than charged off accounts. A charge off is still a debt that can be sold or collected. That means someone can sue you, get a judgment and then garnish wages or attach property. Banks do not want a secured interest in a home that is at risk of being attached. Sorry that news is not better. I'd also question your statement about interest. It is not true that high interest would be cheaper than renting. High interest rates simply mean more profit for the bank. If you borrow 75,000 the difference between a high interest rate and low interest rate could be $500 - 750 per month. It doesn't cost THAT much to rent a 75,000 house. my suggestion would be to rent and settle these debt issues. Once your credit is better take your pile of cash and go look for a home.