@Anonymous wrote:ok i married new wife 8 years ago we moved in my house and rented hers,2 years ago sold mine and moved back into hers.its a mobile home and now we just want a bigger house.started cleaning up her credit 6 months ago start score low low 500,now 620 figure by first of year upper 600's,we owe just on singlewide 12000 we own land its own.we pay 5.5% interest rates.market value about 59000.00 on house and land.should i refinance it or just try and pay down as much as i can on it before we buy another house.i know there are alot of rules about buying a house and renting out old one.we are gona look at buying a bank owned repo house so if anyone knows of good realtor or loan company in or around nashville,tn please let me know.thanks
I can't answer all the questions, but unless you can pay off the loan altogether or darned close, it might not buy you much as far as obtaining a mortgage goes (though getting out of debt is always a good thing admittedly) as it will likely still count against you DTI wise and that's just based on the monthly payment, not the size of the loan.
Refinancing might not save you that much money either as I don't know if there are many lenders which will refinance that small of an amount and closing costs are still going to be non-trivial. It really comes down to how much money you have to work with: generally speaking it's better to have more cash than less when it comes to getting a mortgage, and that applies to bank owned places too, maybe moreso in that case actually as those aren't generally as easy to get as the more common real estate deals. If you're talking a year or two out for a mortgage and keeping the old one effectively forever, then maybe refinancing makes sense, but 5.5% on 12K isn't an awful mortgage... I'd gladly trade you my 3% mortgage for your balance 
.
Also there will be some dings to your credit even if you do get it refinanced, the sooner you're mortgage shopping the more those will affect you.
Hopefully others can answer your other questions.
