Don't buydown your interest rate until you understand this

If you're in the process of buying a house in 2026, there is nothing wrong with buying down your rate. It needs to make sense, and most of you don't know how to decide that. So let me break this down for you. As soon as you go under contract on a house, your loan officer is gonna send you something called a Loan Estimate, which is a formal quote. And you're looking at the first page right here. Most of you are gonna be looking strictly at the interest rate because you think that's the most important part. But really you need to look at the second page to know how much you're paying for it. Because what loan officers do is they offer you a rate that's too good to be true, like that one, and then charge you thousands of dollars on the back end. But the problem is, most of you don't know where to look for it. And because there's so many numbers here, you get overwhelmed. But all you really need to do is zero in on Section A, because those are the only costs that your loan officer actually controls. Everything else on this page is gonna be exactly the same regardless of the lender you work with. And normally, if you're not buying down your rate, this section should not be more than $2,000. But what loan officers will do is lowball your rate and then charge you $20k like they're doing here on the back end, hoping you don't look. Now, I'm not saying buying down the rate is wrong, even though it doesn't make sense here. What you need to do is ask your lender for their best rate with no points. And then you compare that option with their rate with points. You take the cost of the points and you divide it by how much you're gonna save per month with the lower rate. And that's gonna give you a break even point. And if it's taking you more than a few years to break even, I would personally hold off because I think rates will go down in the long term, and you'll have an opportunity to refinance. If you want me to review your Loan Estimate for FREE, send it to me in a DM.