Mortgage Cycling: Advantages and Disadvantages
Mortgage cycling has recently been marketed as a unique way to pay off your mortgage early and build up equity at the same time. The basic premise behind mortgage recycling however, has actually been used before. The main idea is that you make additional payments to reduce the mortgage principal and therefore pay off the loan early. The mortgage principal is the amount you owe, interest payments are calculated according to the amount of this outstanding loan.
Advantages
1. By reducing the amount of your mortgage principal you will significantly reduce the amount of future interest. This is especially significant since if a mortgage was to last 40 years most of the payments in the early years are mainly interest, you do little to reduce the principal.
2. To make it easier to meet the 6 monthly down payments mortgage cycling uses the technique of also taking out a home loan. This is just a standard load guaranteed against the value of your house. The interest rate should be low because it is secured against the value of your house. A careful use of this extra loan enables you to make large lump sums towards paying off your mortgage
Disadvantages
1. It is risky. To take an extra home loan means that if you unexpectedly lose your job and can't meet your repayments your house may be at risk.
2. The advantages of paying off a mortgage early are overestimated. True you may have less to pay when you are 50 but for most people there greatest period of financial difficulty is the first years of a mortgage.
3. Suppose your current monthly mortgage is $1000 this is a lot, and nobody wants to be paying that for 30 years. However in 30 years inflation will reduce the real value of your mortgage payment. Assuming real wages rise (as they have done in the past) it will be only a small % of your income in the future. Also many people find that in the early period of buying a mortgage they may have more bills like education for their kids, old student loans e.t.c.
4. Personally I would like a mortgage that lasts as long as possible, so I can have more money now. But everyone is different, if you are in the lucky position of having much spare cash at the end of every month then Mortgage cycling may well be worth doing.
5. There are less risky flexible mortgages which don't require the taking out of extra home loans..
