Is it possible to find a 40-year mortgage?
The answer should be "yes", although most are adjustable-rate loans. If you can find a 40-year fixed-rate mortgage, you might be surprised to find that the savings aren't so great. At 7%, for example, you'd pay $6.65 for every thousand dollars you borrowed. That drops only a little, to $6.21, for a 40-year term.
For a $100,000 loan, that's only about $44 per month. The savings, such as they are, fall at higher interest rates. At 7.25%, you'd save only about $25.60 per month.
The catch, of course, is that the interest cost over time is also significantly higher for the 40-year term.
Mortgage rates fluctuate from day to day, depending on a number of factors related to the economy and to choices made by investors. While some mortgage money comes from deposits held by banks and credit unions, most of the funds for borrowers come from investors in capital markets.
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