Minnesota’s home-buyers market is at an all time low, which is good news for any home buyer and great news for first time home-buyers. There are tons of homes on the market, and with so many different properties for sale you have a great chance at choosing your perfect starter home or finding the home of your dreams. If you are a first-time home-buyer there are even bigger advantages to buying a home today; you qualify for special incentives put in place to help ensure you succeed with your purchase.
Now even with the incentives, unless you can pay for this new home in full with cash at the time of the sale, a home mortgage will be required. Typically twenty percent of the purchase price is required at the time of the sale, and the rest is borrowed from some type of lending institution. This is why it is so important to act now if you have been thinking of buying; some of the first time home-buyer incentives can significantly lower the down payment required.
Most likely the largest amount money you will ever borrow will be your home mortgage. If you are looking to purchase a ninety to one hundred thousand dollar home, you will probably be looking at getting a mortgage note around seventy or eighty thousand or more. You will make monthly payments to the lender that will be a combination of principal and interest. In the beginning, most of the monthly payment will actually be going towards the interest accumulated on the loan, thereby not actually reducing the principal amount.
That being said, you want to find a favorable loan that offers the lowest interest rate. This will ensure the cost of your home will be as low as possible, and it will also help make it so your monthly payments actually reduce your principal debt and will not just be going towards the interest. A fixed rate home mortgage is a wonderful option because it guarantees that the interest you are being charged will always be the same as long as you are paying off the mortgage. If you take out a 30-year mortgage to pay for your home with a 5% interest on the unpaid principal every year, it does not matter if interest rates rise to 10 or 15 percent. No matter what happens you are guaranteed that 5% mortgage rate.
This is better than having an adjustable rate home mortgage because, as the name implies, with an adjustable rate home mortgage, the mortgage rate can be adjusted every year or two and it usually is. So if the interest rates do rise your interest rate will be adjusted higher every year accordingly, your payment will increase, and additional money will be required just to pay the interest portion before anything comes off of the principal amount.
With interest rates as low as they are right now, however, this is an excellent time to get a fixed rate home mortgage and a great way to get a little peace of mind, because you’ll know exactly what your house payments will be every month now and up to 30 years from now (or whatever the term of your mortgage is).