FHA Refinance Dilemma

[Dale Crawford]

Hello - I have a question on whether or not it would be a good idea to refinance the property we live in. We bought a duplex last year with an assumable FHA loan at 3.625% for $208K. We currently owe about $201k. We put about $40K in it and it's now worth $280k-$300k. We moved into it and the year we were required to live here is about up. I went to our lender to refinance and he would be willing to go 75% LTV at 5.25%. When he saw our rate and that it's assumable he thought we would be crazy to refinance. We were interested in refinancing to a conventional loan so we could get another FHA loan to basically do this again. We realize the money coming back to us wouldn't be much but at least we'd get out from under the FHA loan. The other factor we need to consider is that the rent we can get in the unit we live in is a premium because of the work we've done. This is our first house hack and I wanted to find out what others thought about refinancing considering the rate and it's an assumable loan. Other ideas? Thanks