good option? Hard to find?

[Anonymous]

I want to buy a beach house for $445k, and make $55k in improvements.  My residence is paid for and worth about $250k.  My credit score is 808, and gross income is about $11k/mo.  I have a chunk of cash in the bank, but want to keep it there for security and daughters college in a couple years.

I wanted to know how hard it would be to do the following, and if I would pay any penalties in the for of rates.

I borrow the $356 on the beach house, and

Borrow $144k as a first on my house ($115.2k+$28.8k down from my savings) for $89k down, $55k improvements for beach house.

Hope that is not too confusing.

Thanks,    Jim

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

Makes sense to me... assuming you have very little debt otherwise, your debt ratio should be fine to support both mortgages.  Your primary residence would get primary residence rates, and if you intend to purchase this beach house and use it for vacation/2nd home (just requires 28 days to be used out of the year) then you could get 2nd home interest rates instead of non-owner occupied interest rates.

[Anonymous]

I have no other debt.

So now I am going to start looking for a loan.  Are the main points to compare loans for the best deal:

interest, APR, and fees total?

Where are the best rates for people with good credit?

Thanks,    Jim

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

Important factors to consider are:  rate, fees (get a good faith estimate), character, communication skills, and explaining what to anticipate during the loan process.

For a 30-year fixed, you could expect interest rates in the 5.75-6% range.

The reason APR isn't a great indicator is because different lenders/brokers & different software calculate the APR differently.  It's a lousy reason, but it's true.  Here's an interesting read on Mortgage APR's: http://www.mtg-net.com/sfaq/faq/apr.htm