How to refinance your loan

I used Lending Tree again.

If you have an Alaska Airlines mileage plan, use this link
http://www.lendingtree.com/alaska/?sourceid=27355
If you don't have a mileage plan you should get one. I earned one free flight to Europe (45k miles) just for closing my loan.

It's great if you know exactly the loan you want. It's a bit irritating because the lenders are like vultures. Plan on letting your cell phone go to voicemail for a while. The results through lending tree are a little bogus, so you have to follow up with the lenders to get the real scoop.

Then, this is what I did...

Email every lender asking for a Good Faith Estimate (GFE), providing them the exact loan criteria. In my case I told them

-my exisiting loan payoff amount
-how much extra I wanted as cash back
-roll the closing costs into the loan
-30 year fixed, 0 points
-estimated appraisal amount
-excellent credit

Most will provide exactly what you ask for, but some will put points in there so you have to remind them. Some of them are very pushy, and some will ask you to call them so they can get more info. They will ask you the same stuff you already entered into lendingtree.

Now comes the tricky part. Their GFE's will use different line items and numbering systems. I plugged them into a spreadsheet to compare. I think the most important figures are the rate and the 800 costs. The 1000 costs are also important, but those are third party costs and are usually similar from lender to lender.

Estimated prepaids will also be in the GFE, but those are irrelevant because I believe those are the same no matter who you go with. I threw my current lender into the mix and she was very close, but the rate was 1/8th higher. She tried to tell me her closing costs were lower, but she actually just estimated lower prepaids. Basically, she lied to me. That was very disappointing. Many of them seem to be very deceptive, but they all tell you they are the only ones who can be trusted.

Also, rates constantly change, so you can only compare them if you get updates rates at roughly the same time. The closing costs should remain the same, so once I pin them down on their GFE's I ask them for updated rates all at the same time. This will let you know where they stand.

It takes a little patience, but I think it works very well.