Refi Fever

They announced the mortgage limits for our county the other day. For King, Pierce & Snohomish County, the new limits for conventional & FHA mortages is $567,500. Looks like our housing market will get a nice shot in the arm. While it hasn't fallen like many other areas across the country, it certainly has slowed. So I'm gearing up to get the paperwork done.

I was chatting with a mortgage broker the other day and she indicated that lenders might tighten their credit requirements along with the limit increases, which isn't entirely unexpected.

Luckily, I signed up the other day for a monitoring service called True Credit . It costs 14.95 per month to view your credit report and scores from the three bureaus. I don't plan to keep it long, I just wanted to monitor my progress as I prepare to refinance prior to Dec 31st when the loan limits are supposed to expire. So I have had a look at my credit scores. Suffice to say, I'm not doing bad at all. I've cracked 700 series for two of the bureaus and 695 in the other. My plan to pay down the debt should bring the scores up to the desired range.

Based on what the broker mentioned, she expected lenders to require a score in the 700-teens and above range. I've achieved that already for 2 bureaus, I just need to raise the other one, which I definitely think is doable without more effort than writing checks.

All of these efforts will have significant impact on my budget and lower my monthly outgo by approximately $550-650. Talk about having some cushion each payday...I've already squeezed many of of my expenses until they screamed, so I was able to create a pretty nice cushion each month, which is currently earmarked for debt payment. This additional amount will make the checkwriting easier and faster! I can't wait until the debt payments are done...Finally, the money will be able to work a little more productively for me.