Refinancing a mortgage loan can save you a lot of money when you do it right. It can do many things like consolidate high-interest debt, drop mortgage insurance, and lower your interest rate.
You can also shorten your mortgage loan term when you refinance. But, again, this is only possible if you do it right.
Part of refinancing a mortgage loan can also make it seem like you are skipping certain payments. But when you skip these payments, do you really skip them?
Today, we will share with you whether or not you skip payments while refinancing your mortgage loans.
When You Refinance A Mortgage Do You Skip A Payment?
No, sadly you do not skip a mortgage loan payment when you refinance a home loan. And although it may seem like you are skipping payments, you will one day pay for those “skipped” payments.
Usually, when you refinance a mortgage loan, you do not pay for the first month. For instance, let’s say that you closed on your refinanced mortgage loan on June 15.
From June 16 on, you will not pay for any mortgage payments until the second month of your mortgage loan payments. So that means that you will start paying on August 1.
When refinancing, your first due payment for your refinanced mortgage is 45 days after the closing. Now, this may seem like you just skipped the first month of payment.
However, this is actually a marketing strategy used by refinancing advertisements to tempt customers into refinancing.
But, of course, that is not to say that refinancing is not a good idea. It all depends on the situation you’re in. Just don’t do it because you think you’ll be able to skip a mortgage payment.
Why Don’t You Pay For The First Month?
During the closing of your refinancing mortgage loan, your lender collects interest fees from the day the funding starts up to the end of the month. And that is the reason why you do not pay for the first month of your refinanced mortgage loan.
But if that is the case, why does it appear that you skip your first month of mortgage loan payment? Well, when you are refinancing a mortgage, it will seem like you are skipping the first month of payment because there is no balance due for the month right after they refinance.
It is essential to understand that mortgage payments are made in arrears, meaning you are not paying for the month ahead.
However, like what we previously mentioned, interest for the first month are collected during the closing phase of your mortgage loan refinancing. And that means that interest in refinancing are pretty much prepaid costs that you’re going to have pay for before your first “official” payment.
This type of “skipping” a mortgage loan payment is still different from mortgage forbearance. Mortgage forbearance is a type of prevention for foreclosure in which your mortgage lender agrees to temporarily reduce or suspend your monthly mortgage payments to give you some time to be financially stable again.
This is a great option for people who ran into some financial problems and cannot quickly pay their mortgage payments at the moment.