All Forum Posts by: Dave Messier

I appreciate the feedback folks have provided. Just so this is possibly useful for others who may be in the same boat we ended up doing this:

1. we're leaving the original note that we have locked in at 2.9% on the property - still have 29 years left on that.

2. we found one option through bank of America/Merril Lynch to do a 30 year fixed rate HELOC for $300k at 6% and another product the original local bank came back with us for to do a 30 year fixed rate HELOC at 6.2% for $287k.

We ended up sticking with the smaller bank bc they are more of a sure thing rather than taking the time to work with BoA/Merrill and if my spreadsheets are correct this option gets us much of our cash out AND saves us over $300/mo in interest payments over the next 30 years over as compared to the original product we were looking at which would have refinanced the entire loan at ~$970k on a 30 year fixed at 4.8%. Long story short my take away was push your banker to see if there are 2nd mortgage options you can lock in and BoA seems to have a product they can do this on for a better rate bc they are so large they can support a full portfolio of these products on their books and don't have to worry as much about selling them so their risk tolerance for 2nd mortgages is a little better. Good luck to anyone else dealing with this!

Thanks guys, this is a duplex with the potential to turn the attic into a 3rd unit if we can navigate zoning. I appreciate the feedback, all angles I've thought about, thanks for the responses. Bonnie, I wouldn't say we're "addicted" to cheap money but if it makes the cash flows stronger I sure will look for ways to keep that 2.9% interest rate b/c it means another $700/mo in our pocket for 30 years and hey, that's better than a poke in the eye ;o)

Hi guys, long time listener first time caller. I have a BRRRR with my sister in Roxbury, MA. We purchased it in Nov 2020 for $770k, my sister did a fantastic job on the remodel it instead of the 12 mo timeline we had aimed for it took 18 mo. Now as we're refinancing rates have gone up a full 2 percentage points. We have a $587k mortgage for 30 years at 2.85% interest since this is her primary residence and don't want to lose that - though the plan is for it to be a full rental after she lives there for a year. Appraisal looks like it will come in at $1.5M or more which allows us to get our cash back out BUT the best rate we can get now is 4.9%. Is there any product out there and lender who would refinance over our existing mortgage? I don't want to lose the $585k or so at 2.85% interest bc i don't think we'll ever see those rates again, but we DO want to get our cash back out of the deal so we can reinvest elsewhere. Any suggestions?