There are articles all over the net, particularly news magazines. You get to make the choices. You should qualify for 1st time homebuyer incentives. There are many options for you. Our area has 1 for county, 1 for state, then HUD has help. These are based on the home purchase price on existing homes.

If you build you could lose a lot of potential free start up money. There are free mortgage calculators out there on the web that can do this. Also this is getting to be a real buyers market where I live. Sorry, dont know that one. But there are tons of free mortgage calculators you can use on the web. As a former mortgage firm owner, here is the correct answer to your question: As a cost to you, one point equals one percentage of the loan. When points are used as discounts, you are basically paying the lender to decrease your interest rate for the period of the loan. 17 per month on your loan. Paying points, if you are going to hold onto the mortgage, is generally always a good idea.

They key with paying points is to determine how long it will take to recoup your investment. Simply punch in the before and after rate scenerios and compare the difference in payment. The number will be how many months you will need to wait to recoup the investment. Divide by 12 to determine the years. As a mortgage broker, I always recommended paying points if I had customers savvy enough to understand them.

Overall they are a good deal.