How to Calculate Your Mortgage Payment
What is a Mortgage Payment? At a basic level, you know the definition of a mortgage payment: the amount of money you pay toward your mortgage each month. But you may be wondering, what exactly is included in a…
How Much Are Closing Costs?
As a potential brand-new homeowner, your first thoughts might turn toward the amount you’ll pay for your monthly mortgage payments. But have you considered how much you’ll have to pay for the down payment or closing costs for your…
What is a Mortgage? A Guide for Beginners
Getting a mortgage may seem like a complex task with many layers and steps involved. However, the first step to breaking down the process involves answering the most basic question: “What is a mortgage?” Understanding the very basics of…
What is Escrow and Why Do You Need It?
When you first go through the home buying process, you may have lots of questions about down payments, closing your mortgage and interest rates. You may wonder about the key steps to get a mortgage. You will need to…
How Much House Can I Afford?
How Much House Can I Afford? It’s often easiest to learn how much house you can afford by working backward from your monthly expenses, then determining how much you can afford to pay. In other words, add up your…
How Long Do You Have To Wait To Refinance Your Mortgage?
The question “how soon can you refinance a mortgage?” depends on the type of mortgage you have. If you’ve only recently joined the ranks of mortgage-paying homeowners, you might be curious about a few things: Exactly how soon after…
6 Annoying But True Reasons Closing Dates Move
We recently launched the Closing Date Promise, our commitment to making sure Morty customers’ closings happen on time. The below explains why closings can be such a pain and what to watch out for. A closing date is the…
Demystifying 3 Confusing Parts of Your Closing Disclosure
It’s just a few days before your home loan is scheduled to close. Your lender suddenly sends you their closing disclosure: a hefty document that highlights the terms of your loan and all the costs that come with it….
APR vs Interest Rate: A Comprehensive Breakdown of Key Differences
Whenever you evaluate loan options, one of the first things you’ll see is each of their interest rates and annual percentage rates (APR). It’s easy to conflate the two. After all, they’re both shown as percentages, and their figures…
A Homebuyer’s Guide to Decoding Mortgage Acronyms
The first time you buy a home, you’ll probably run across a fair number of mortgage-industry terms that you haven’t encountered before. If you find yourself stumbling a bit on terms you don’t know or acronyms you don’t understand,…
4 Steps Every Homebuyer Should Follow When Getting a Mortgage
We wanted to thank our friends over at Lemonade—a licensed insurance carrier that offers homeowners and renters insurance powered by AI—for their help in writing this article! The process of searching for and getting a Mortgage might seem confusing…
Your Final Walkthrough: What to Look For and When to Put on the Brakes
You’re almost there, future homeowner! You’ve made a successful offer and sorted out your financing. Your future home appraised well, and it cleared a title search. Now, it’s time for your final walkthrough: one last look around before you…
4 Pieces of Advice First-Time Homebuyers Should Definitely Ignore
Letting folks know that you’re looking to buy your first home can open a floodgate of unsolicited advice from friends and loved-ones. Your Aunt and Uncle bought their home during the Reagan administration, but are now suddenly experts on…
The Psychology of Home Buying: Set Aside Emotions and Focus on the Facts
A variety of emotions can motivate homebuyers. Painful factors may include job relocation or a parent moving in due to illness. Some are driven by the hope of promise: an impending family or a dream being realized. One thing…
4 Ways Millennials are Transitioning from Renting to Buying
Millennials are expected to form 20 million new households by 2025. That indicates a major shift for many 18-34-year-olds: from renting to owning a home. Renters typically need to come up with first, last, and security deposit lock in…
When’s the Best Season to Buy a Home?
Pros and Cons of Buying a Home in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter Spring and summer months bring an influx of potential homebuyers. In warmer months, the trees are blooming. Birds are singing. You are not shivering and wearing…
4 Reasons Your Home Offer Was Rejected by the Seller
You found the perfect home. You walked over the threshold at the open house, took a good look around, and thought to yourself, you know, I really think this could be it. So you checked out the neighborhood, and…
3 Tips For Finding a Home You’ll Love
Buying a house can be a great investment in your future financial well-being. But unlike other financial investments, a house isn’t just a line-item on a balance sheet. When it comes to buying a home, the choice you make…
’Tis the Season: Using Gift Funds for Your Down Payment
’Tis the season for gift-giving! If you’ve been very, very, good—and if you’ve got kind and generous people in your life—you just might receive some money to put towards your future home purchase. And if you’ll be using gift…
When It Comes to Buying a Home, Pets Matter
About 61% of American households have pets. Last year, American pet owners spent nearly 70 billion dollars on goods and services for their pets. If you’ve got a pet, chances are good that you consider your pet an important…