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Twenty programs is a lot of ladder. Start from the number instead — what you can carry decides most of it.
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Pricing
Not because they are hidden, and not because you have to ask. Because a single rate on a web page is an answer to a question about somebody else, priced at a moment that has already passed — and because the company whose name is at the top of this site is fictional and cannot lend to anyone.
What a rate table is
A lender's rate table is a price for one invented borrower: a particular credit band, a particular down payment, an owner-occupied detached house, a short lock, and usually points paid at closing. It is generated once a day, or once a week, from a rate sheet that changes several times between generations. It is accurate about a scenario and silent about yours.
None of that makes it dishonest. The dishonest part is the layout: a big number, a small footnote, and a date underneath that implies the number is current. The footnote is where the loan lives.
Illustrative example only — not a rate quote, not an APR offer, and not a commitment to lend.
What actually moves the price
These are the things a lender adjusts for before it can quote you anything. Most of them cannot be assessed from a form, which is the real reason a firm number needs a credit report and a property.
Pricing moves in bands, not smoothly. Crossing from 739 to 740, or from 759 to 760, can change the price of the loan; moving from 742 to 758 usually changes nothing at all. This is why a lender cannot price you honestly without a credit report, and why a number typed into a form is a guess.
The same banding applies to how much of the price you are borrowing. The adjustments interact with the credit band rather than adding to it, so the effect of putting five per cent more down depends entirely on where your score sits.
A home you live in, a second home and a rental are three different risks and three different prices. Occupancy is also the single most common piece of mortgage fraud, which is why lenders verify it rather than take your word.
A detached house, a condominium, a manufactured home and a two-to-four-unit building price differently. Condominiums carry an extra layer: the building itself has to be reviewed, and a project that fails review can end the loan regardless of the borrower.
Below the conforming limit, at high-balance in a costlier county, and above it into jumbo territory are three different markets with three different sets of investors. The cheapest rate is not always in the lowest bracket.
Every rate has a price. Paying points buys a lower rate; taking a higher rate buys a credit toward closing costs. A table showing one rate has silently chosen one point on that curve, and it is almost never the one you would choose.
A rate held for fifteen days costs less than the same rate held for sixty, because the lender is carrying the risk for longer. Advertised rates are usually quoted on the shortest lock, which is the one least likely to survive a purchase contract.
Purchase, rate-and-term refinance and cash-out refinance price differently, in that order. So do escrow waivers, subordinate financing behind the first mortgage, and a debt-to-income ratio near the program ceiling.
Mortgages are funded by bonds that trade all day. When those move enough, lenders reissue their pricing mid-session — a reprice — and the number that was true at ten is not true at two. Nothing about you changed.
An illustration, not a rate sheet
Every figure in the table below is invented. The base rate of 6.500% was chosen because it is a round number, and the quarter-point step per point paid is a teaching device — real rate sheets do not move in tidy steps, and the shape of the curve changes daily. What is real is the arithmetic: the payment column is the standard amortising payment formula and the break-even column is the cost of the points divided by the monthly difference. Nothing here describes any market, on any day, for any borrower.
| Points paid | What that costs | Illustrative rate | Principal & interest | Monthly difference | Months to break even |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | — | 6.500% illustration | $2,528 | — | — |
| 0.5 | $2,000 | 6.250% illustration | $2,463 | $65 less | 31 months |
| 1 | $4,000 | 6.000% illustration | $2,398 | $130 less | 31 months |
| 2 | $8,000 | 5.625% illustration | $2,303 | $226 less | 36 months |
Read the last column first. Paying points is a bet that you will still have this loan when the saving has repaid the cost — and the median American mortgage does not survive that long, because people move and refinance. The break-even months are the honest question; the rate is the headline.
Illustrative example only — not a rate quote, not an APR offer, and not a commitment to lend. The calculators linked above take whatever rate you type and show the arithmetic; they do not know what any lender would charge you, and neither does this page.
Two numbers people confuse
The percentage the interest is calculated at. It sets your payment and nothing else. It is the number in your loan documents, the number the servicer uses, and the only one of the two that has any effect on what leaves your account each month.
A comparison figure required by regulation. It folds points, origination and certain other charges into a single annualised percentage, on the assumption that you keep the loan for its full term. Useful for lining two offers up; misleading the moment your real horizon is five years rather than thirty.
A quoted APR is a calculation about a specific set of fees. Two lenders can include different charges and both be within the rules, which is why the Loan Estimate — a standardised three-page document with the costs broken into lettered sections — is the thing to compare, not the two numbers at the top of a web page.How to read one, section by section.
Questions
This is a demonstration website for a fictional lender. Copperline Home Loans does not exist, is not licensed anywhere, and cannot lend. Every rate, payment, schedule and person shown is illustrative. Nothing here is a quote, an offer, or a commitment to lend, and no form on this site sends, stores or transmits anything.