Some people may say yes!
Upward sloping yield curve. It’s important to understand that due to the time value of money and inflation, the longer you borrow the higher your interest rate. If you borrow money from me today to pay me back tomorrow, I won’t charge you interest. But, if you want to borrow money from me today, to pay back over the next 30 years, you better hell believe I’m going to charge you an interest rate above inflation to counteract inflation, make some money, and bake in some risk of default.
Average length of stay. First of all, the average duration one lives in and owns a home is 7 years. If that’s the case, what on earth are you doing borrowing a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for? A 23 year + overestimation of ownership is a serious miscalculation based on the statistics at hand. With a 5/1 ARM, your underestimation is only 2 years, but you already have baked that in.
Match fixed rate with length of stay. If you plan to live in your house for 10 years, take out a 10 year fixed rate (amortizing over 30 years) as the most conservative loan duration. A 10 year fixed rate is cheaper than a 20 year or 30 year fixed rate. It is only logical that you match your mortgage fixed rate with your expected duration of stay. Sure, you might stay longer, but you might also stay shorter as well. If you know you plan to stay in your house forever, it’s more justifiable to take out a 30-year fixed, but I still wouldn’t because 1) You will likely pay down your loan faster than 30 years, and 2) The spreads are unjustly high in this environment.
Adjustable rate loans have an interest rate cap. People think, thanks to fear mongering by the media and mortgage officers, that once the adjustable rate loan period is over, your mortgage rate will skyrocket and make things super unaffordable. This is not the case because everything is relative and rates are capped. I’m refinancing to a 5/1 ARM at 2.625% with all fees included, and after 5 years, the interest rate can reset one time to a maximum of 7.25%. Whoopdee doo! After 5 years, if I don’t pay any extra principal, my principal mortgage amount is about 10% less. A 7.25% mortgage rate on a 10% lower principal amount is very digest-able.
If rates rocket higher, you will be celebrating. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. The 10-year yield is a reflection of inflation expectations. If the 10-year yield, and therefore mortgage rates are skyrocketing, that means inflation expectations are at the very least skyrocketing. However, you don’t have inflation expectations going higher unless demand for real goods and services going higher. Higher demand is a reflection of a stronger economy, and your real assets (property), by very definition or inflating! So what if inflation rises from 2% to 5%, causing your mortgage to reset to 7% due to the 2% spread? If your home is now inflating by 5%, and you have a 80% loan-to-value ratio, your cash on cash return is going up by 25%!
0 years in a row of deflation. Look at the historical 10-year treasury yield. Rates have gone down for 30 years in a row. That’s right folks. THIRTY YEARS! Are you telling me there’s no trend here? Are you saying that we are going to see massive inflation spikes on the way (which are fine as I just wrote) all of a sudden? In these 30 years, we’ve become a much more efficient society who enacts monetary and fiscal policy in anticipation or with shorter lead times. Yes, there will be occasional upward blips in pricing, but I highly doubt there will be a 5-10 year continuous ramp in inflation, which means your 5-10 year ARM is just fine.
