What are the advantages of fixed rate versus adjustable rate loans?

With a fixed-rate loan, your monthly payment of principal and interest never change for the life of your loan. Your property taxes and homeowner's insurance premium can fluctuate up or down, but generally with a fixed-rate loan your payment will be very stable.

Fixed-rate loans are available in many terms: 30-year, 20-year, 15-year, even 10-year.

During the early amortization period of a fixed-rate loan, a large percentage of your monthly payment goes toward interest, and a much smaller part toward principal. That gradually reverses itself as the loan ages.

You might choose a fixed-rate loan if you want to lock in a low rate. If you have an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) now, refinancing with a fixed-rate loan can give you more monthly payment stability.

Adjustable Rate Mortgages -- ARMs, as we called them above -- come in even more varieties. Generally, ARMs determine what you must pay based on an outside index, perhaps the 6-month Certificate of Deposit (CD) rate, the one-year Treasury Security rate, the Federal Home Loan Bank's 11th District Cost of Funds Index (COFI), or others. They may adjust every six months, every year, three years, five years, etc... depending on the terms of the loans. 

Most programs have a "cap" that protects you from your monthly payment going up too much at once. There may be a cap on how much your interest rate can go up in one period -- say, no more than two percent per year, even if the underlying index goes up by more than two percent. You may have a "payment cap," that instead of capping the interest rate directly caps the amount your monthly payment can go up in one period. In addition, almost all ARM programs have a "lifetime cap" -- your interest rate can never exceed that cap amount, no matter what.

ARMs often have their lowest, most attractive rates at the beginning of the loan, and can guarantee that rate for anywhere from a month to ten years. You may hear people talking about or read about what are called "3/1 ARMs" or "5/1 ARMs" or the like. That means that the introductory rate is set for three or five years, and then adjusts according to an index every year thereafter for the life of the loan. Loans like this are often best for people who anticipate moving -- and therefore selling the house to be mortgaged -- within three or five years, depending on how long the lower rate will be in effect.

You might choose an ARM to take advantage of a lower introductory rate and count on either moving, refinancing again or simply absorbing the higher rate after the introductory rate goes up. With ARMs, you do risk your rate going up, but you also take advantage when rates go down by pocketing more money each month that would otherwise have gone toward your mortgage payment.

About DNJ Mortgage

DNJ Mortgage is a locally owned and operated mortgage broker that has been in business for 21 years. We specialize in low and no closing cost loans. We are able to provide this service to our customers due to the volume of business that we originate on a monthly basis. We have strategic relationships with several national banks that offer us steep volume discounts which we then pass on to our customers. With the no closing cost loan, we are actually paying your closing costs and not rolling them into the loan.

DNJ Mortgage's corporate office is located in Raleigh, NC with an additional office in Charlotte, NC.  DNJ Mortgage services all of North Carolina as well as Colorado.