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Summary: Tell it like it is!!!
Review: The book is written in an understandable language for the lay person. It provides plenty of examples and tables which back up what the author is saying. In addition, the author provides worksheets from his website which helps readers to calculate mort. payment, etc. The reader definately will have a knowledge of how to negotiate your interest rate and eliminate unnecessary fees. The author touches on the topic of credit which is what we all need to obtain a house. If you're tired of being abused by individuals in the industry, then this book is for you.
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Summary: I Saved $128,000 Dollars
Review: The difference between a NO-NEG-AM at 8.86% and a 30 year Fixed at 7.75% saved me $128,000 on my mortgage. Thanks to Randy's book I knew what questions to ask my lender. I knew the right answer too - NO - no negative amortization loan for me. This book gives you the knowledge you need to make an informed decision. No matter how "nice" and "helpful" your lender's may appear, YOU need to know what they are telling you is accurate. Don't buy a house without knowing what the terms being offered really mean for you. Thanks LoanWolf!!
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Summary: Simple rules to saving thousands of dollars.
Review: The key to getting the best deal on your mortgage lies in understanding these three simple rules:Ignorance is Expensive Education is Cheap Knowledge is Power Lenders know 10 or 20 times as much as you do about loans so you start out at a tremendous disadvantage. If you want to negotiate a better deal, you had better be on an equal footing with them. To do that, you need to get an education and my book is the place to start. A mere $11.96 and four to five hours of effort can make a huge difference in making intelligent decisions about your family's financial future. True the promise in the title, you can save thousands of dollars. This is an easy-to-read book that actually makes getting a loan fun. You will understand why it is the #1 selling mortgage book at amazon.com.
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Summary: 250 pages dedicated to obtaining a mortgage
Review: There hasn't been a single question about mortgage this book hasn't fully answered for me. This book is geared towards the first time home buyer who can't tell the difference between a mortgage from a smorgage. Although it won't make you an expert, it will provide a comprehensive understanding of every aspect of obtaining a mortgage. I particularly found the section on garbage fees very helpful. It has shaved off hundreds of dollars from my closing fees, and that alone was worth the price and the time invested in reading this book.
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Summary: Extremely Helpful Book
Review: This book is a must-read for anyone who doesn't have much knowledge of the mortgage process. It's easy to understand, and covers the entire process of shopping for and closing a mortgage. While it does tend to be biased towards dealing with mortgage brokers, anyone can use this book to educate themselves on what they need to know to be a smart mortgage shopper, whether they use a bank or broker. This is the best resource on mortgages for the "common person" (like myself) that I've found, and I've looked at MANY. You can't go wrong buying this book. I wish I'd read it before I bought the first time - I'd have saved a bunch of money and headache.
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Summary: Insider's Look at the Mortgage Industry & Processes
Review: This book is very easy to read and understand most of the math. It reads like you're having a friendly conversation with an industry insider who is trying hard to explain things in simple, non-technical ways, and even better, the author isn't trying to sell you something. You can't get this kind of information by talking to a real live mortgage broker, since they only want to sell you a deal. This book has helped me to understand a lot about how the mortgage process works, and what I should look out for. If I had to find something to criticize, I would say that there is a lot of explanation over loan types that I will never use, but at least I do know more about what's out there. Actually, for me, this book didn't steer me into doing anything different for my upcoming home purchase, but it did confirm that my original plan is the best course for someone in my situation. I will go to my credit union, make a 20%+ down payment and get a 15 year loan. The chapter on 15 year loans is the most eye-opening thing in the book. It's amazing that even though a 30 year loan (the most common) has a lower monthly payment, after 30 years, you will have paid nearly triple the price of your house, with about 66% being interest to the bank! If that sounds extreme, just multiply your monthly payment by 360 payments, and you will see it for yourself. The better alternative, IF you can afford slightyly higher monthly payments, is the 15 year loan, where the interest total is less than half of the total payments. Just multiply your montly payment by 180 months to see that total. Also, a 15 year loan goes for about .5% less APR. If you can put down 20%, then you can also get out of paying the Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI), which saves you a few thousand dollars over the course of the loan. This is a very nice book, that I could not put down. Since I am planning to purchase my first house in the near future, I found this book to be very good at explaining many technical terms that I had heard of, but I did not know what they meant. Now I know much more about mortgages, and I feel more confident about going out and buying a house.
Rating: 
Summary: Some interesting detail, but could be better
Review: This book is written by a mortgage industry insider and makes the claim that it will reveal the inner workings or even secrets of the process of obtaining a mortgage. And there is some interesting detail concerning ARMs, lender rate sheets, zero-point loans, etc. But I think the book lacks organization and consistency. Like a lot of "insider" books it needed to have been read by a lot of "outsiders" for coherency before publishing. The author is not consistent in using the terminology that he defines at the start. He often is not clear about when he is talking about the firm originating your loan or the ultimate buyer of the loan. He creates as much confusion as clarity in his sloppy use of the terms: rebates, points, loan discount points, or loan origination points. Furthermore, for a detail-oriented book I was surprised that section numbers of a standard settlement form, 800, 900, 1000, etc, were not referred to when discussing closing costs. I would have like to have seen more realistic discussion about the ability of a consumer to force a loan originator to reveal or discuss the profit margin on a loan as the author suggests one do. As far as I know American businesses are not in the habit and in fact resist revealing markups to consumers. For some readers this book may be just what they are looking for, but I suspect that for most the detail is just not presented in a way that makes it particularly understandable or usable.
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Summary: Valuable Book
Review: This is a valuable book, with a lot of insight that you will not find elsewhere. The author's realistic perspective on mortgage lenders will help you understand what you are dealing with. That knowledge is worth thousands of dollars, just as the title indicates. At our homefair.com web site, we receive many books to review. This is one of the few to which we have given an endorsement.
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Summary: An excellent book
Review: This is one of the books I bought when I bought my first house. It's a fine reference source if you want to know what all the different mortgage options are (e.g., what's the difference between a fixed-rate mortgage and an adjustable-rate mortgage, what indexes are ARMs tied to, etc.). And the author--Randy Johnson--makes honest recommendations on which mortgages best suit certain typical lifestyles or income scenarios. Also, one of the books great strengths is the discussion of how many discount points to pay. The one thing I found missing, though*, was at least one real-world scenario that you're likely to see used if you visit a mortgage broker in my neck of the woods [Silicon Valley], or other high-priced regions. And that is the use of a 'first' and a 'second' mortgage in a so-called "piggyback financing" or "80-10-10 financing" arrangement which can help you eliminate Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). There's no in-depth discussion of this technique--which is very common--which I found incredible. There's all this advice on getting an ARM tied to the CD index vs. the LIBOR index with a balloon payment if you stay in your house for 3 years instead of 10 years and so on and so forth...but nothing about getting a conforming, fixed-rate, 30-year first mortgage and a smaller second in a technique to reduce your overall payments during the lives of the loans. It's a simple technique, and very worth a detailed analysis, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, like I said, if you want to know esoteric information about mortgages, then this is a worthy book. It helped me, it's just a little shy of a full-fledged 5-star effort. *Please Note: The review written above pertained to the 1st edition which I initially gave a 4-star rating. The second edition--which I now own also--has effectively covered "Piggyback" loans (i.e, 80-10-10 transactions), which I think propels this book into a solid 5-star work. The second edition also has updated information on shopping for a mortgage on the Internet, and some [though not all] of the examples that show different types of mortgages have had their interest rates brought more into line with present-day (i.e., 2002) rates. This is an excellent book for folks who want to know all about mortgages.
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Summary: not very useful
Review: Very disappointing. Contrary to the title, I did not find any useful information on how to save money on a mortgage. The author spends very little time on junk fees which can add hundreds or even thousands of $$$ in unnecessary fees to unwary buyers. The book also makes little use of the internet resources that are now available to compare rates. I would also expect a general opinion as to certain large lenders. There is little useful information here. Save your money and buy a copy of your credit report instead.
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