We have a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for two reasons.

First, we weren’t sure whether we would be ready to move in 5 to 7 years and didn’t want to deal with refinancing. We’ve now been at our place for a bit more than five years and I’m glad we didn’t need to enter the mortgage market recently. My housinglust is pretty strong right now, but I think we’ll stay put, not only because to move we’d have to paint multiple rooms (I hate painting), but also because current mortgage rates have priced us out of the kind of house we’d move to next.

Secondly, the 30 year rate was so darned low! We have a 5.79 percent rate and would have maybe found a conservative adjustable rate for a few basis points below that, but nothing worth the risk of needing to deal with an adjustable rate.
I know that adjustable rate mortgages have worked well for many, freeing up cash or allowing them to get into a home in a pricey market, for example.

New data from the Mortgage Bankers Association released today shows that more and more people are taking out or refinancing to fixed rate mortgages and I expect that trend to continue as rates rise and more ARMs adjust.

Do you have an adjustable rate mortgage? If so, how did you pick it?

Are you one of the people worried about refinancing the loans within the next 18 months as the rate adjusts? If so, what’s your game plan?

Any mortgage regrets?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 12:56 pm and is filed under housing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.