Tugg I am one of those anal risk averse types so I always advocate the 30 year fixed mortgage even if it is a little bit higher. Savvy people who can make a better return on the money do indeed do better by not getting into these safer vehicles.
I also advocate buydowns however I am really careful as to how much I buydown. I always look at the expectancy of how long I intend to keep the property. Notice I use the words keep the property, not necessarly live in it. Performing the exercise of whether the buydown is worth it or not is pretty easy. A broad (very broad) approximation is about 4 years per point.
HLS can run the numbers for you to see when the accumulated interest for each rate crosses over the buydown amount. You may find that getting the 5.5 may be the better deal for you. The thing is that the simple crossover point calculation doesn’t account for inflation.
