Sacramento Mortgage Rates

An excellent source for average current and historical mortgage information is Freddie Mac's web site, http://www.freddiemac.com. For example, Freddie Mac's site contains a summary of their weekly mortgage surveys.

Some sites including Yahoo Finace give current information for Sacramento Mortgage Rates, but we've found that most of the rates listed on such sites are simply national bank rates as opposed to local lenders. For a competitive and up-to-the-minute quote, please contact our preferred lender, Nicholas Yaholkovsky, at 916-580-1244, or you can choose to prequalify on-line.

Factors that Influence Your Mortgage Rate

There are a variety of factors that influence your mortgage rate and your ability to obtain financing. Here are some of the more important ones:

• Type of property
  As a general rule, you'll be able to get the most financing (as a percentage of total purchase price) for single family, owner occupied homes. Frequently, larger down payments will be required for rental properties and land. Interest rates will also frequently be lower for owner-occupied properties.
   
• Overall Income
  Lenders look at your overall income in relation to the amount you are financing.
   
• Debt to Income Ratio
  Perhaps even more important than your total income is your debt to income ratio. Lenders don't include your rent payment or current mortgage as part of your debt, since these payments will "go away" to be replaced by your new mortgage. Instead, lenders look at payments such as car payments, credit card debt, and other revolving charge accounts. For purposes of considering "debt", other expenses such as child support may also be considered.
   
• Your credit scores
  In general, your credit score reflects your ability to handle new credit, and reflects your payment history, amounts you currently owe, the length of your credit history, any new credit you have recently acquired, and types of credit you use. A good general treatment of how your scores are calculated, what they mean, and how to improve your score is the Credit Education section of the myFICO site.
   
• Loan to Value Ratio
  For improved, owner occupied properties, the first 80% of financing generally receives the best interest rates. For financing over 80%, borrowers are often asked to pay Principle Mortgage Insurance (PMI), to cover the lender's risk of having a higher loan to value ratio. An cost effective alternative many times is a second note that's financed at a slightly higher rate. For example, an "80/15/5" package means an 80% first mortgage, a 15% second mortgage, with 5% down.
   
• Loan type
  Interest rates vary widely according to the type of loan you're applying for. Frequent sources of confusion are that lenders will quote rates for adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), which typically have lower initial rates than the prevailing fixed rate. Fixed rate products generally "cost more", but are worthwhile during times of low general rates overall, unless you know you'll be moving and "cashing out" in a short time.