Home Refinancing Problems

Looking to get your home refinanced with today's record low interest rates? Bring lots of paper work and plenty of patience.

Both 30 year and 15 year fixed rates are at the lowest levels ever recorded in the 40 year history of mortgage market surveys. So you might think getting that refi would be a piece of cake. Forget it. That cake will be very stale by the time you try to eat it.

Horror stories abound about homeowners with excellent credit, equity in their homes and money in the bank waiting months for approval, if at all. And during that time expect to spend hours at a copy machine. Banks are demanding an incredible amount of documentation, after asking for very little documentation during the housing boom that turned into the housing bust. There was even a reported case of a gardner getting a home loan without so much as a pay stub. The only documentation in his file was a picture of him cutting grass.

So lenders have swung from no doc loans to thick files filled with your financial history. Just think how much better the economy would be, if lenders had covered their you know what way back when.