Negative Amortization and Interest Only Option Mortgages

An interest only option mortgage loan is a mortgagedramatically and very quickly.
that only requires one to pay the interest portion ofA negative amortization mortgage is generally done
ones mortgage payment. An interest only option is anwhere a buyer has a large amount of equity in their
attachment to another type of loan. Either a fixed ratehome and they are willing to allow the mortgage
or an adjustable rate mortgage can have an interestbalance to increase in order to substantially lower their
only option.payment. A Negative amortization loan is similar to an
The interest only option allows the appreciation of theinterest only option in that the person is only paying
home to build equity instead of making payments tointerest on the loan. The difference is that one is not
reduce the principal. For instance, after makingpaying enough interest to cover the actual interest
payments in a $300,000 home for 5 years one maycost of the mortgage. The interest that they are not
have a balance of $280,000. If the house appreciatedpaying is being added to the mortgage balance. The
to $320,000 one would now have $40,000 in equity.person will ultimately owe more on the home than the
An interest only option in the same scenario wouldbalance when they initially began.
have a balance of $300,000 and $20,000 in equity. TheThe positive aspect is that the payment is substantially
difference is that the payment on the fixed ratelower than even an interest only mortgage. The
mortgage would be much higher than that of annegative is that you are actually increasing the balance
interest only as part of the payment is paying principal.of ones mortgage. This type of financing would be
With the interest only, one would have paid roughlyused for a person who is planning on selling their home
$7,000 less in payments and would have a muchin the next few years and would like a substantially
lower payment.lower payment in the mean time. This is only available
In this scenario the buyer is utilizing the appreciation offor a person with a large amount of equity in their
the house instead of their own money to earn equity.home. It is beneficial to a person who is going to retire
This is a good option in a very strong housing marketin two or three years.
where the home values are increasing very