I caught some flack from SettlementOne about Costco’s [stock COST][/stock] mortgage and refinance program because they felt my depiction of the Costco mortgage program as not particularly personal was unfair.
SettlementOne offers real estate settlement services under the program.
Well, here we present the other side of the story. Lilly Neubauer and her husband, Marcus, refinanced their mortgage through Costco’s program recently. The couple refinanced not out of financial desperation, but were nonetheless eager to take advantage of lower interest rates. Lilly reports she and her husband are extremely happy with working with Costco. Lilly even went so far as to say, “Yay, yay, yay! I love Costco!”
Clearly, she was quite satisfied. And fair is fair.
Here is what she had to say:
“I subscribe to Costco’s Facebook page and my husband received their emails so we both heard about refinancing with them. Costco took us from a 5.5% (which was low when we bought) to 3.875% interest. Closing costs were around $1,000 and could be applied to the principal. Overall we’re saving $200 a month on our mortgage, which we can use as an overpayment or put into savings or use for an unexpected cost. That freedom has been really great for us!
All of the initial steps and paperwork is handled over email. You have to really do your homework, read every single document and not be afraid to ask questions. A notary came by our house on a weekday evening to perform the closing. It worked great for us! We banked with Costco’s partner bank. I’m not sure if there is an option to use a different bank but this worked for us, and we did not have another preference so we were happy with it.
This is not our forever home, just an early investment that we would like to keep about 10 years or so total, so unless the interest rates drop significantly again we do not plan to refinance. When we do sell this home and buy again I will definitely look for how we can obtain our mortgage through Costco and we have referred the program to other friends and even our real estate agent who all agreed that it is a great opportunity.”
Now, if that isn’t the other side of the story, I don’t know what is.
