An Insider's Guide to Refinancing Your Mortgage

September 15, 2008
Author and senior loan officer Reed ("Mortgages 101; Mortgage Confidential") is back to impart advice and insider tips for people finding themselves in the current rush to refinance. Here, he skillfully outlines the process from start to finish, examining refinancing with a dollars-and-cents formula to calculate recovery time and providing an overview of the different mortgage programs and vendors available today. Helpful advice, like requesting to review the title report and appraisal, is included throughout. Reed also dispels many common misperceptions surrounding the mortgage industry, such as competitive interest rates, online lead generators, and aggregator sites. Negative-amortization and subprime loans are briefly explored but could have been developed further. Still, the author ably provides concrete counsel for obtaining rate quotes and picking a loan officer and does a good job of showing how to compare apples to apples in an attempt to determine the best deal available. Predatory lending and loan fraud are also discussed. This title would serve as a nice postsubprime mortgage crisis update for real estate finance collections. Recommended for all public libraries.Tracy Mohaidheen, M.L.I.S., West Bloomfield, MI

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