What is the difference between the interest rate and the A.P.R.?
You'll see an interest rate and an Annual Percentage Rate (A.P.R.) for each mortgage loan you see advertised. The easy answer to "why" is that federal law requires the lender to tell you both.
The A.P.R. is a tool for comparing different loans, which will include different interest rates but also different points and other terms. The A.P.R. is designed to represent the "true cost of a loan" to the borrower, expressed in the form of a yearly rate. This way, lenders can't "hide" fees and upfront costs behind low advertised rates.
While it's designed to make it easier to compare loans, it's sometimes confusing because the A.P.R. includes some, but not all, of the various fees and insurance premiums that accompany a mortgage. And since the federal law that requires lenders to disclose the A.P.R. does not clearly define what goes into the calculation, A.P.R.s can vary from lender to lender and loan to loan.
The A.P.R. on a loan tied to a market index, like a 5/1 ARM, assumes the market index will never change. But ARMs were invented because the market index changes and makes fixed rate loans cheaper or more expensive to make -- that's why they're variable rate in the first placed!
So, A.P.R.s are at best inexact. The lesson is, that A.P.R. can be a guide, but you need a mortgage professional to help you find the truly best loan for you.
Note when you're browsing for loan terms that the A.P.R. will not tell you about balloon payments or prepayment penalties, or how long your rate is locked. Also, you'll see that A.P.R.s on 15-year loans will carry a higher relative rate due to the fact that points are amortized over a shorter period of time.
Some loan products, like Express Mortgage's Flat Fee mortgage pricing, are more beneficial at different loan amounts. For example, the fees associated with smaller loans, of say under $100,000, will artificially inflate the APR figure, while on a larger loan of $700,000 will show a much lower APR figure. This is because the cost of the loan is represented as a smaller portion of the loan with more dollars involved.
If you are applying for a small home loan, this does not mean that there is fine print in the loan documentation hiding a much higher interest rate, is is only that the representation of the cost of obtaining financing will be larger in proportion to the amount of money you are borrowing.
