This is a good post. I would think loan to value would also factor in heavily, possibly as the best assessment of risk.

In our case, we recently closed through Lenderfi. $600k mortgage on a $940k house in Vienna. Excellent credit, dti, etc. 2.75% 30 year, truly no cost (ie. lender credits covered all fees and taxes). They actually wired us a small amount at closing.

Lenderfi was excellent to deal with, and just transferred servicing to Citizens.

bethesdawings wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am mystified as to why I can't snag a super low mortgage refinance rate. I've shopped around multiple lenders (both local and national) and can't find one willing to offer an APR lower than 3% for a zero-cost refinance. Meanwhile, I see daily ads and forum posts about rates in the mid-2s and falling. I have excellent credit (800+) and $600k remaining on the loan with LTV of 75%. Is it because I have a DC rowhouse and not a SFH in the suburbs? Does location matter that much? I did all the tips recommended on Bogleheads and the like, and still can't lock down a lower rate.

Mortgage broker here. The main reason for the higher interest rate is your high balance loan amount. The low rates posted in the ads are mostly for the conforming loan with loan amount <= $510,400 (2020) for primary residence. For $600K, it is considered a high balance loan and the interest rate is generally higher.

At the beginning of the pandemic, many lenders no longer wanted to take high balance loans due to higher risks. Hence, the lenders raised the interest rate for high balance & Jumbo loans. Some lenders even stop offering the high-balance & jumbo loan program. Several months later, the lender started to loosen up the high balance loan (the prices are slightly higher than the conforming loan). As for now, the jumbo loan’s interest rates still remain relatively high because of the high risk.

For a $600K loan in DMV area, as for today’s price, we have wholesale lenders who offer 2.625% with cost and 2.875% no cost (or 2.75% with some lender credit). In general, wholesale lenders offer better prices than retail lenders. However, local banks can sometimes offer unbeatable prices when they have sufficient funds and are on promotion. Currently, wholesale lenders are offering very competitive prices than local banks since wholesale lenders have larger pools of money.

Anonymous wrote:Here's a 162 page thread on people's refi experiences. You should get a sense of the best deals available today. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=289559

Anonymous wrote:I am mystified as to why I can't snag a super low mortgage refinance rate. I've shopped around multiple lenders (both local and national) and can't find one willing to offer an APR lower than 3% for a zero-cost refinance. Meanwhile, I see daily ads and forum posts about rates in the mid-2s and falling. I have excellent credit (800+) and $600k remaining on the loan with LTV of 75%. Is it because I have a DC rowhouse and not a SFH in the suburbs? Does location matter that much? I did all the tips recommended on Bogleheads and the like, and still can't lock down a lower rate.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is my exact situation as well, with 700k mortgage. A couple of things:
- even in HCOL areas where conventional loan limits are higher, anything over $510k ($548k in 2021) is a higher rate, high-balance loan. Under $510k and <60% LTV gets the absolute lowest conventional rates.
- some of the rates are area specific. I’ve been following the same thread on Bogleheads, and for example Loan Cabin quotes me a 2.375% with about a quarter point, but they don’t lend in Virginia. Same with a few of the other frequently listed lenders.
- lenders are at max capacity, so if you don’t have a pre-existing relationship they would typically rather keep margins high than compete on price. That will change the longer rates stay this low.

This is the truth. Also, there is a difference between no points and no cost. No-cost means that the lender is covering ALL closing costs from their title insurance to all the random fees. For us, that meant that they had to rebate us about $4,000. Which they did - but only since we have a pre-existing banking relationship. We ended up with a no-fee, no-points, no-cost, 2.5% loan on a high-balance DC mortgage (no jumbo), but it required us to move about 250K in brokerage assets from our old Charles Schwab account. The bank's goal is to somehow milk us of fees (though since we only buy and hold index funds - I'm not sure how).

If you have 150K+ in investable assets, try giving the big banks a call or wait until mortgage companies are more desparate.

That’s helpful, thanks. Do you mind sharing which bank?