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Refinance when the math says yes.

Hannah Blevins · Loan Officer, NMLS 2009458

A lower rate isn't the point. Whether the new loan pays for itself before you sell it is the point. Run your own numbers below — no application, no credit pull, no one calling you about a mailer — then bring what you find to a fifteen-minute call.

Run your break-even Book a 15-minute call

Four reasons to refinance. Four different answers.

They get lumped together, and they shouldn't be. Each one has its own test, and for two of them the honest answer is often no.

Rate & term

Lower the payment

The common one. You took the rate that was available when you bought, and a better one is available now. The trap is the reset: refinancing into a fresh 30 years lowers what you send each month and can raise what the house costs you in total.

The testDoes it pay for itself before you move — counting the closing costs, not just the payment?

Shorter term

Pay it off sooner

Trade the 30 for a 20 or a 15. The payment usually goes up, the total interest falls hard, and you stop paying the bank a decade early. It's the least advertised refinance and often the best one.

The testCan you carry the higher payment in a bad month, not just a good one?

Cash-out

Take equity out

Turn part of what the house is worth into money you can spend — a renovation, a business, a pile of credit card debt at a rate that hurts. It's real money at a mortgage rate, secured by the roof over your head. That last part is the whole story.

The testWill what you're buying outlast the thirty years you'll spend paying for it?

Mortgage insurance

Drop the MI

FHA mortgage insurance sticks for the life of the loan on most files, and refinancing to a conventional loan is the only way off it. Conventional PMI is different — it usually falls away on its own without a refinance.

The testIs it FHA? If it's conventional PMI, ask your servicer to drop it before you pay anyone to refinance it.

Run it before anyone runs your credit.

Most break-even math online is closing costs divided by monthly savings. That number ignores the clock restarting, so a fresh 30-year loan looks free when it isn't. This one runs both loans month by month and tells you the truth.

The other answer

Sometimes the right move is to keep the loan you have.

Nobody sends a mailer that says that, which is roughly why it's worth saying. A refinance costs real money on the day you sign it, and it only makes sense if you're around long enough to earn that money back.

If your numbers come out on the wrong side of the line, that's a useful answer and it's free. Come back when a rate moves, when the mortgage insurance is the problem, or when the term — not the rate — is what you actually want to change.

Ask someone who'll tell you no

Reasons to wait

Any one of these and the math usually says not yet:

  • You might move inside three years. Break-even rarely arrives that fast, and closing costs don't come back at the closing table.
  • Your PMI is about to fall off anyway. Conventional mortgage insurance ends on its own — paying closing costs to reach it early is paying twice.
  • The savings are a quarter point. On most balances that's a break-even measured in years, and it's the version lenders advertise hardest.
  • You're consolidating credit cards. It can be the right call — but it moves unsecured debt onto the house, and it doesn't fix what filled the cards.
  • You're eight years into a thirty. Restarting the clock can cost more in total interest than the lower rate saves, unless you keep sending your current payment.

What's different

What most homeowners don't know about refinancing.

Some of it works differently, and a few of these surprise people at the table. None of them are reasons not to do it — they're reasons to know the number before you commit to it.

Have a Loan Estimate? Send it
  • The appraisal decides everythingSometimes waived
  • Tennessee taxes the new loan$0.115 per $100 over $2,000
  • Your escrow account is rebuiltOld one refunded · new one funded
  • You don't skip a paymentYou prepay the interest
  • Nobody splits the costsNo seller · no concessions

Three conversations, and one of them might end it.

If the numbers don't work, you'll hear that on the first call rather than after an application.

  1. Check

    Fifteen minutes on your balance, your rate, what's left on the term, and how long you plan to stay. You'll leave knowing whether a refinance is worth pricing at all — nothing to fill out, no credit pulled to find out.

  2. Price

    If it's worth pricing, you get options side by side: the terms, the closing costs itemized, and the month the refinance turns positive. Compare it to any other offer you're holding — that's what the Second Look is for.

  3. Close

    Appraisal, underwriting, and a signing that usually happens at your kitchen table or the title company down the road.

The Second Look

Already been quoted a refinance? Send the estimate over.

Upload the Loan Estimate the other lender gave you. Within 24 hours you'll hear whether we can beat it — and if we can't, you'll hear that too, along with where their number is actually good.

Start a Second Look How the Second Look works

A Second Look is not a credit decision or a commitment to lend. You're entitled to shop for the lender that's right for you — we'd just like to be in the running.

Hannah Blevins and Caroline Parker reviewing a file
Reviewed in 24h

Let's talk

Fifteen minutes, no application.

Bring the numbers you ran above. If they don't work, that's a two-minute call and you've lost nothing.

Open Hannah's calendar15 MIN · VIDEO OR PHONE Call or text(865) 386‑7114 EmailHBLEVINS@FMLOANS.COM Start the applicationSECURE · FOUNDATION MORTGAGE

What to have ready

Nothing, to talk. But these four make the first call do real work:

  • Your mortgage statement — the balance, the rate, and the payment, which is most of what the math needs.
  • Whether you pay mortgage insurance — and if you do, whether the loan is FHA or conventional.
  • How long you plan to keep the house — the single input that decides most of these.
  • Any Loan Estimate you've been given — that's what a Second Look is for.