Imagine this:
Half of all people have a more expensive mortgage than average.That's right. And while to a great extent it is due to our financial situation (wages, savings) it's mostly due to which bank we happened to talk to and how well we managed to negotiate.
In the past, whenever I found myself in a situation where negotiating could be useful, I'd chicken out. I'd go for a compromise that was O.K. I split the difference.
This changed over the summer when I happened to listen to Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your life depended on it, by Chris Voss.
Chris Voss is a former FBI hostage negotiator and the CEO of Black Swan Group Ltd, so when it comes to negotiating, he knows his shit. I am not exaggerating one bit when I say that Never Split the Difference changed my view on negotiating and I fully recommend it to everyone. After reading the book I've significantly improved my finances through negotiating, but I'll tell you more about that and the book in another post. Get it on Amazon or Audible, but just do it, ok? Ok.
Two things to negotiate
When you buy a house, you get to negotiate on two things:- The price of the house
- The mortgage
Refinancing your mortgage is really satisfying - there's no way you can really lose in it. If you get a better deal, you take it. If you don't, no harm done.
Banks do have the upper hand on that negotiation though. How many times have you heard them say: "no-one really has a better rate than this"? Exactly. They have all the information, yours is very limited.
So what can you do about this? You've come to the right place for that!
I happen to have information that's easy for you to access. I've used this to renegotiate my own mortgage rate twice already, saving me and my wife thousands of euros.
And you can do it too!
Do you have a low mortgage rate?
Typically people know their own mortgage rate, but have little knowledge of how it compares to others. Most people would actually feel like their mortgage is "better than average" or actually "pretty good", since that's what their bank has told them.
But how hard did they actually negotiate for it? If it wasn't painful for the bank, it probably wasn't the best rate you could get.
So I put together a small tool you can use to check how your mortgage compares to others in your country. Try it out below:
We (me and the readers) need a favor!
Do you know of a good online service to use for mortgage refinancing in your country? Help the readers out by commenting below. Thank you! πHope you found it useful! Let me know in the comments or on twitter how I can improve it!
