In the mortgage industry, the length of your loan used to be the only major issue you had to deal with. How times have changed! In the current market, the variety of loans that exist are simply stunning. Of course, the massive increase in loan options has inevitably led to massive confusion.
Borrowing Tip
Regardless of the type of loan you go with, you should always try to keep your loan term as short as possible. The shorter the loan period, the less you will pay in interest. Here an example using 15 and 30 year loans.
Assume our first homebuyer gets a $100,000 loan at 8 percent interest. He length of the loan is 30 years with a monthly payment of $733.76. For this mortgage, our homebuyer is going to pay $164,155.25 in interest over the life of the loan.
Now, take the same scenario, but reduce the term of the loan to 15 years. Our homebuyer is going to see the monthly payment bumped to $955.65 per month. Over the length of the loan, our homebuyer is going to pay $90,000 less in interest payments over the life of the loan. On top of this, the house will be paid off in half the time.
When borrowing money for a home purchase, you have to carefully budget your finances. If you can afford increased monthly payments, however, a shorter loan length is going to save you a lot of money over time.
