Upgrades - Will They Add To Your Overall Mortgage Interest?

By Author: Rob Parker
Total Articles: 312
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A lot of people find a home that they like that is almost perfect, it just needs a few upgrades. Quite a few people may also find a home that is affordable, and located in a good neighbourhood, but which requires some work in order to really be up to their living standards. Very often, a family purchasing a home that needs some work done will roll the cost of the upgrades into their mortgage. This means that they have the money to do the upgrades right away, and don't really have to worry about doing them in the future. It also means that they won't have to take a loan out, including a home equity loan, in the future in order to do the needed renovations.

Rolling upgrade costs into your original mortgage costs is a popular option, but if it is one you are considering, you need to think about how owing that extra money is affecting your mortgage interest rate. There are a couple of things to consider here.

First of all, your mortgage will cost you the most money, in terms of interest, during your first five years of having taken the loan out. This is when you owe the most so it stands to reason that you will have ...
... to pay more interest. Having the upgrades rolled into the cost will mean an even larger amount that you have to pay interest on.

Secondly, mortgage terms almost always come with punishment for those who pay off more in a year than a certain amount. This means that even if you find you have enough money to pay off the upgrade portion of your mortgage, you will still end up paying the loan originator extra money.

One way to get around the problem of extra interest, and making sure that you can pay the upgrade portions of your home purchase off early if you want, is to negotiate the upgrade costs separately so that they are not a part of the mortgage principle. You can do this when you go to your loan originator, or you can even seek to take out a separate loan yourself through a bank or so on. Just remember that the whole point is to avoid higher interest on your mortgage, so calculate the added interest of both your upgrades and your mortgage per month to make sure you really are saving.