{"id":33110,"date":"2015-05-12T11:47:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T18:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redfindevelop.wpengine.com\/blog\/?p=33110"},"modified":"2020-10-06T17:08:33","modified_gmt":"2020-10-07T00:08:33","slug":"bi-weekly-mortgages-not-always-a-scam-but-not-always-a-good-idea-either","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/bi-weekly-mortgages-not-always-a-scam-but-not-always-a-good-idea-either\/","title":{"rendered":"Bi-Weekly Mortgages: Not Always a Scam, But Not Always a Good Idea, Either"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want\u00a0 to cut thousands of dollars and years off your mortgage? All it takes are a few simple steps! But here’s a word of advice\u2014don\u2019t pay someone to do it for you, and do your homework first. Sometimes those savings aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.
\nYesterday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government watchdog agency established after the housing collapse, sued<\/a> Nationwide BiWeekly Administration Inc., a company that promises homeowners big savings on their mortgages in return for a fee.\u00a0The Ohio-based company touts its Interest Minimizer<\/a> program as a way for people to save billions of dollars in interest, quickly build home equity and easily manage monthly bills.
\nThe concept is sound–Nationwide simply took an old idea and found a way to make money from it. What the CFPB didn\u2019t like were the company’s marketing and fees, which can add up to hundreds of dollars before generating any savings. In its lawsuit , the bureau accused Nationwide of misleading customers about costs and their potential to save money.
\nGenerically speaking, here\u2019s how a bi-weekly mortgage plan works. Typically, you make 12 mortgage payments a year. But a lot of people get paid every two weeks. What if you made half a mortgage payment every time you got paid? That\u2019s 26 payments a year, or an entire extra month of payments. \u00a0Another approach: If your loan is new, pay a few extra dollars a month toward your principal balance. Thanks to the beauty of amortization<\/a>, you’ll pay your loan down years sooner and save on interest.
\nThe problem? Costs are front-loaded and savings are back-loaded, so it literally takes years to\u00a0see real results. Very few of us will live in a house long enough to get the real payoff\u2014an early mortgage-burning party. And if your interest rate is low, like most are these days, there might be better uses for your money than paying down a cheap, tax-deductible loan.
\nCompanies that charge homeowners to set up bi-weekly plans push the savings timeline out even further because of their up-front fees. Nationwide charged customers about $49 million to set up and manage mortgage-payment plans between 2011 and 2014 , according to the CFPB complaint<\/a>.
\nWhat did homeowners get in return? Take the hypothetical example of a customer with a $160,204 mortgage at 4.125 percent interest. Under Nationwide\u2019s bi-weekly payment plan, it would take that person nine years just to recover their $1,200 in fees, according to the CFPB. It\u00a0would take two decades before he saved even half of what Nationwide promised, the CFPB claimed. Who stays in their house that long?
\n\u201cA substantial number of consumers will not stay in the program long enough to achieve any savings,\u201d CFPB lawyers wrote. Only a quarter of people in Nationwide\u2019s Interest Minimizer program at the end of last year had been enrolled longer than four years, according to the lawsuit.
\nNationwide and its lawyers didn\u2019t return calls seeking comment, and judges and juries eventually will decide if the consumer bureau is telling it straight.
\nIn the meantime, you can probably set up your own bi-weekly mortgage payment with a phone call to your lender, at zero cost. Bankrate has a free mortgage calculator here<\/a> to get you started. Pay close attention to the chart at the bottom. Will you really be in your home long enough to see any savings? Call your lender and a financial advisor before making any big moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Want to cut thousands of dollars and years off your mortgage? All it takes are a few simple steps! But here’s a word of advice\u2014don\u2019t pay someone to do it for you, and do your homework first. Sometimes those savings aren’t what they’re cracked up to be. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13355,"featured_media":33113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[32,74,19],"coauthors":[79,198,206,163],"class_list":["post-33110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-housing-market-news","tag-housing-market-tracker","tag-mortgage-tips","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBi-Weekly Mortgages: Not Always a Scam, But Not Always a Good Idea, Either - Redfin Real Estate News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Want to cut thousands of dollars and years off your mortgage? 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For more information about working with a Redfin real estate agent to buy or sell a home, visit our \"Why Redfin?,\" page.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/blog"],"url":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/author\/lorraine-woellertredfin-com\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13355"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33110"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redfin.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=33110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}