Mortgage Rates Texas: Should you refinance your ARM to a 30 Year fixed mortgage rate? With Texas mortgage rates close to record lows, this is a good time to refinance your adjustable rate mortgage to a 30 year fixed mortgage rate. Want to figure your ARM vs 30 year fixed rate mortgage? Use this FREE mortgage calculator: http://www.mylendingplace.com/mortgage-calculator/calculators/armvsfix.php
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Texas Mortgage Rates in Houston as of 10/26/09
Texas Conforming Home Loans and FHA Loans:
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates 5.125% 5.318% 
30-Year Fixed FHA Mortgage Rates 5.500% 6.245%
15-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates 4.500% 4.826%
Texas Conforming Home Loans and FHA Home Loans:
(Larger Loan Amounts in Eligible Areas)
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates 5.250% 5.390%
30-Year Fixed FHA Mortgage Rates 5.250% 5.924%
Texas Jumbo Home Loans:
(Amounts that exceed $417,000)
30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates 5.750% 5.895%
Should You Refinance Your ARM?
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/20/real_estate/refinance_adjustable_mortgage.moneymag/index.htm
(Money Magazine) — If you are among the 6.5 million homeowners who took out a low-rate adjustable-rate mortgage during the housing boom, you’ve probably spent the past couple of years waiting for your day of reckoning to come.
After all, you’ve probably heard repeated warnings that when your ARM resets your payments would spike dramatically: an especially big problem if you used a low-rate ARM to stretch for a home you could barely afford.
The good news is that scenario hasn’t come to pass. Instead, mortgage rates have fallen to record lows, and when your ARM resets you’ll probably see your monthly nut fall, not rise.
But once the economy stabilizes, the government will start peeling back the policies that are keeping home mortgage rates low.
“Eventually rates are going to go up very significantly,” says Greg McBride, a senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. The Mortgage Bankers Association predicts fixed mortgage rates will reach 5.9% by the end of 2010 and 6.3% by the end of 2011. http://www.bankrate.com/mortgage.aspx
To see what could happen to your payments later on, look on your mortgage documents to find the cap, or the number of points your rate can move in any given year after the first reset (one or two is typical), as well as the lifetime cap on your loan. Then figure out if you should refinance now and what kind of mortgage you should get if you do.
Refiance to a fixed-rate mortgage loan if:
You might be less attractive to a lender later on. If you’ll need to take a big loan to pay your kid’s college tuition, say, or think you might get laid off — then it’s worth doing the refinance while you have the chance.
You’ll be in your home five years from now. While most experts think that mortgage rates will stay low for a while, they’re not likely to get much lower, and there’s no guarantee they won’t jump unexpectedly. http://www.mylendingplace.com/mortgage/rates/Texas/
If you’re planning to stay longer than five years, go with a 30-year fixed mortgage to eliminate any interest-rate risk, since rates on seven- and 10-year ARMs are only a notch lower than those on 30-year mortgage loans. And if you have any doubts about your time frame, lock in. After all, you don’t want to be in this same predicament five or so years down the road.
You’ll pay more to lock in a 30 year fixed-rate mortgage today. But a couple of years from now, holding on to that adjustable-rate loan could get costly.
