If there's one thing American investors love, it's an over-inflated market. Which is why they keep buying houses and new ones keep coming onto the market. According to the latest data, housing starts rose an annualized 3.4% in September, matching a 17-year high. Whoo-ha! Go, baby go.
I wonder if the people buying these houses, for ever-rising prices, are the same people who couldn't get enough Amazon.com stock at $100 or Lucent shares for $75? Having been burned in the stock market, I guess they decided to re-invest what was left in their homes. Are we in a housing bubble? I don't know, but I suspect that we are, at least in some areas of the country.
Don't misunderstand me, now. I own a home, and I think home ownership is one of the great freedoms we enjoy in this country. I get nervous about the people who are pulling all the equity out of their homes with new mortgages. I suspect that most of these people are spending the equity, not investing it. What they're left with is a larger mortgage, and a bunch of worthless Chinese made goods.
The current low-interest rate environment is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to lock in a cheap 30-year mortgage on your home. If you refinance the balance of your current mortgage, you've won. If you refinance, and max out on your equity, you're probably hurting yourself. You might say that by refinancing the equity in your home, you're just cashing in on your home's rise in value. Well, not exactly.
What you're really doing is collateralizing the portion of the house that you own to get a cash loan, with the intention of paying back the loan at a later date. You've really transferred ownership of the equity in your house to your lender, not cashed it out. If you want to cash out your equity, you have to sell your house, plain and simple.
For those who are buying new homes, the low interest environment is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you can get a tremendous rate on a 30-year mortgage, the likes of which you see once in a lifetime. On the other hand, because we live in a world where the monthly payment is all that matters, lower interest rate mean higher home prices. The monthly payment stays the same, but now you've got a much higher mortgage balance, which could turn around to bite you in the future.
The dangers of refinancing the equity out of your home are readily apparent, but why shouldn't you buy a home in the current environment?
I'm not saying you shouldn't. What I'm saying is you have to be careful. Most real estate professionals understand that the monthly payment matters, not the price of the house, when selling a house. Therefore, the lower interest rates fall, the more money can be charged for a house. If you're a home buyer, with a set amount of money for a downpayment, the price of the house will determine how much equity you start with. And, it determines whether you get a conventional mortgage, with 20% down, or some other form with less downpayment. That equity percentage will determine whether you'll be paying for the great rip-off known as Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). Trust me, it's just another monthly payout that goes down a giant rat-hole. There's no value in PMI, and you don't want to pay it.
For the sake of argument, let's assume that you won't be paying any PMI. Now, let's compare two neighbors, with identical houses, who have the same monthly payments on thirty year mortgages. The first neighbor has a $100,000 mortgage at 10% interest, the second has a $146,000 mortgage at 6%. You may think this is extreme, but I can tell you that this is what has happened in my neighborhood over the last 5-7 years. The type of house I'm living in retailed for under $100,000 in 1999, and retails now in the $130,000's.
Back to our example. Both of our neighbors are paying about $875 per month on their mortgage. Now let