Realtrends.com came out with their list of the top agents in the country recently, and while we weren’t quite able to make the top 1,000 real estate agents in the country, we are excited to announce that we were ranked No. 20 in the state of Maryland for 2016 in terms of all units sold. Considering that there are around 26,000 agents in Maryland and D.C., we are pretty proud of that accomplishment and wanted to thank all of our clients for supporting us.
I also wanted to take a little bit to talk about jumbo mortgages and what’s going on in the jumbo mortgage industry. Traditionally, if you wanted to borrow anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million, it would’ve been more expensive in the Maryland area to borrow $1 million than a couple hundred thousand.
It actually hasn’t been that way for the last couple of years. In Maryland, if you were to borrow under $424,000 with a conventional mortgage with 5% down, your interest rate would be right around 4.5%. If you were to move into the jumbo category and borrow more than $424,000 with 10% down, your interest rate would be about 4.25% and you wouldn’t need mortgage insurance.
“Interest rates do get better as you have a larger down payment.”
You don’t have to put down 20% for a jumbo mortgage in order to get mortgage insurance out of your life, but it’s cheaper to borrow $1 million at 10% down than it is to borrow $200,000 at 5% down. Interest rates do get better as you have a larger down payment, and there are a lot of banks that have programs that are geared toward the more affluent buyer and offer incentives to take your banking to these particular banks.
There is a popular program geared toward people who are looking to buy new construction but have a home to sell. If a buyer is willing to put 10% down on a mortgage for a new build and are able to sell their home within six months, they can then recast their mortgage, put an additional 10% with the money they gained from selling the house, and then have their interest rate lowered by 3/8ths of a point. It’s actually a free refinance and you can keep the original interest rate that you locked in when you first acquired the mortgage.
If you have any questions about this topic or need recommendations for some lenders to talk to, please give me a call. I’d be happy to help!