Bankrate.com: What Is It, What Do They Do?
January 24th, 2008 Categories: Buying, Financing, Keller Williams
It seems everytime we look up an article on CNN, WashingtonPost, etc. there’s this box with the daily mortgage rates from Bankrate.com. What do the rates show? Why do they appear on these websites?
Bankrate.com is one of the leading web resources for financial information. They survey over 4,800 financial institutions in the 50 U.S. States to find the quotes they display on charts, like the one shown above (daily quote for today, January 24th). It shows you the rate change since last week - we see above the drastic drop following the Fed rate cut. While the image above shows current mortgage rate estimates, Bankrate also provides estimates for credit cards, new and used automobile loans, money market accounts, certificates of deposit, checking and ATM fees, home equity loans and online banking fees.
*Note: In the bottom right corner of the image above, it says “rates may include points.” For those of you who don’t know what points are, here’s a brief, high-level explanation. Each “point” is 1% of the LOAN amount. By paying points, you pay a lump sum of the interest amount upfront to essentially “buydown” your interest rate for the life of your mortgage.
Bankrate has a lot of other useful information during this time of economic change. Please call me if you have any questions or would like to discuss anything!
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