Mortgage refinancing

Hi, Me and my partner are looking to refinance our mortgage, I have a couple of questions.
1, We have only been in our mortgage for to years and we borrowed 100%, we don't yet have 5%eq, Who do you think would be the best bank to approach?, will any banks refinance us?
2, We paid Lenders Mortgage Insurance of $9,500 do we lose that if we refinance with someone else? does it roll over? or is it refunded?
Any help would be great

Honestly I doubt many places would allow you to refinance with less than 5% as they're calling for up to 20% deposit these days. Also if you bought 2 years ago chances are your house is worth less now than what the mortgage owing on the property is (they would do a valuation and find that out) - so it probably wouldn't be worth it.

Haven't heard of Lenders Mortgage Insurance paid in a lump sum, only of it being paid in installments. I would assume that there would be a clause where it would come under part of your break fees, if you have to pay those.

That's the other thing - if you are coming out of your fixed term then it does pay to shop around, but if you are still locked into a fixed term the break fees will be a killer.

Good luck but TBH I would stick in there until you have a bit more equity, unless your earning power has increased significantly and then I would approach a mortgage broker (a reputable one) to find out what could be best for you.

I would approach a mortgage broker.
We used the local Mike Pero guy when we first got our mortgage, then for refixing and also when we switched banks and found him awesome. Saved us alot of hassle and he got us a good deal all times.

i know people keep saying go thru a mortgage broker but not all places use them (yesthe banks pay them a fee for referring to them) ie: bnz do not use mortgage brokers - so you are better off picking a bank and going to see them - they can do all the figures and say yes or no if they can do it or not and most won't charge for the service. (i know bnz do this and do not charge)

When is your fixed term up? With the break fees, you might find that a saving of $100 a week is eaten up by the break fees that would need to be added back on to your mortgage.

We broke earlier in the year as we were selling and buying, and had to suck up a ridiculous amount of break fees. It was worth it for us though as we sold our house for a nice profit (bought 3 years prior), and then bought a more expensive house.

We stuck with the same bank (ASB), and as we have a great relationship with our mortgage guy, he allowed us to borrow 85% on the new house - a huge amount as well given that this house cost nearly $600k.

Sit down, crunch the numbers to see if it is worth it, speak to your current mortgage person to get their opinion, and then ring a couple of others too to see what they can offer.

Good luck.

emz wrote: How long have you got to go on your fixed rate? We are on 8.2% but are just waiting it out until February when our rate comes off as the break fees are horrendous (because of course the banks lose that extra 2%+ of interest when you break).

We come off our fixed term in 2 months, so we are thinking we should start looking what is out there for us, we don't want to break early we will wait until the fixed term is up

I have had part of LMI refunded twice - once when I sold my house after 6 months, and the second time when we sold our house after 2 years and got a bigger mortgage for another house. But of course we had to pay an LMI fee on the new mortgage, because it is going to be with a different bank I'd assume it'd be the same and you'd get a refund of the LMI from your current bank and have to pay a new LMI fee to the new bank. Although maybe that would be part of the new mortgage...I dunno. Crying baby is distracting me lol.

We are dealing with BNZ they have offered us a refinancing package fixed for 18months at 5.99% got our house valued and it has gone up so we are wrapped!!!!!
To anyone looking I would highly suggest you see BNZ they have been great

lucky - when i went through BNZ they told me we were good to put in offers on houses up to 180000 then when we found a house for 157000 they declined us at 4.30pm the day before we went unconditional and when i asked if i did have the 20% would they put it through they said they could only look at it again in 6mths needless to say i no longer deal with BNZ