Should I pay points on my mortgage? Points, credits and buydowns

A lender shows you two rates: a lower one that costs money at closing, and a higher one that comes with money back. “Should I pay points on my mortgage?” is the pricing question I hear most, and I answer it the same way every time, with one division problem. Here’s that math, how lender credits and seller-paid buydowns fit into it, and the line I use to say yes or no.

Points, credits, buydowns and paydowns: what each one does

People mix these up, and price sheets don’t help. In plain English:

The line people miss: points don’t pay down your loan. That cash goes to the lender as the price of a lower rate. It doesn’t reduce your balance and it doesn’t build equity. You’re prepaying to shave the payment, so the only question is how long the savings take to pay you back.

Mortgage points break-even: Gap, Savings, Break-Even

Every point, credit and buydown decision I make runs through three numbers. I call it Gap, Savings, Break-Even.

• Gap: the extra cash the lower rate costs you today.
• Savings: how much lower the monthly principal and interest payment is. Leave out taxes, homeowners insurance and mortgage insurance; they don’t change with the rate.
• Break-even: the gap divided by the savings. That’s how many months of lower payments it takes to get your cash back.

Then hold that number up against how long you’ll keep the loan. Not the house: the loan. A refinance ends a loan just as surely as a sale does.

You can run your own numbers in the mortgage points calculator. It does exactly this division and shows where you land if you sell or refinance early.

Should I pay points on my mortgage? My 24-month rule

Is it worth it to pay points on a mortgage? My rule of thumb is 24 months or less. If the break-even is longer than that, most of the time it isn’t worth it.

The reason is how people actually use mortgages. In my experience, a buyer is far likelier to refinance within about two years, or sell within about five, than to keep one loan for 30 years. Leave before break-even and the points cost you money. Stay past it and every month after is profit. A first-time buyer who’ll likely own the home 3 to 7 years needs a break-even well inside that window, and a five-year payback isn’t.

That example above isn’t unusual. In my 2026 files, most point offers I ran took somewhere between about 50 and 67 months to break even. I say yes to points when:

• the break-even is about a year or less, which happens when one rate on the sheet is priced cheap
• the seller is paying for them, though even then the real cost is the closing-cost help that money could have paid instead
• the cost is small, you’ve already hit your cash goal with reserves left over, and the payment is the one thing keeping the house out of reach

Even when a buyer can easily afford points, my answer is often “yes we can, no I don’t think we should.” Being able to pay for them isn’t the test. Payback time is.

Also ask what else that cash could do. At an example rate of 6.5%, each $1,000 you add to the down payment lowers the payment about $6.32 a month. That’s a slow payback too, but at least it builds equity. And if buying points would drain the money you keep in the bank for a bad month, don’t buy them. Reserves come first.

How much does a lower rate cost? Price the whole menu

There’s no fixed price for a lower rate. On the 2026 price sheets I worked, one point bought anywhere from about a quarter to about a half of a percentage point of rate, depending on the day and the loan. Rates move in eighths (0.125%), and every eighth has its own price. Some are cheap. Some are terrible. So I never price one option. I price the menu.

Here’s what that looks like on a $320,000 loan. The pricing is made up for teaching, but it behaves the way real sheets do.

Three lessons from that table:

1. Look for the sweet spot. The 6.625% costs $400 and saves about $27 a month. That’s 15 months, and it passes.
2. Deeper isn’t better. One point and two points both take about 61 months. Buying more rate didn’t buy a faster payback.
3. Measure from the option you’d actually take. If you were going to take the 7.25% with $4,800 back, moving to 6.625% doesn’t cost $400. It costs $5,200: the $400 you pay plus the $4,800 you give up. For $134 a month, that’s about 39 months. It fails.

The 6.5% and the 6.25% are what I call trap rates: they look like a deal and fail the math. Trap rates get advertised because 6.0% sounds better than 6.25%, with the points in small print. Run every row before you pick one, and compare menus priced the same day on locked Loan Estimates, because an unlocked quote can move by the afternoon. There’s also a floor: every sheet stops somewhere.

Lender credit vs points: the same math, run backward

A lender credit is the mirror image of a point. You take a rate above par, and the lender pays money toward your closing costs. It isn’t a trick or a hidden fee. A loan with a higher rate is worth more to the investor who buys it, and part of that value comes back to you as a rebate. It shows on page 2 of your Loan Estimate under Lender Credits, and it comes straight off your cash to close.

The break-even runs the other way. Divide the credit by how much more you’ll pay each month. That’s how many months until the higher payment has eaten the credit.

The credit makes sense when you won’t keep the loan long: buyers short on cash, buyers who expect to refinance once the loan has enough on-time payments behind it, and service members who move every two to three years and would almost never earn back points. If you take the credit, write your break-even month down. You need to sell or refinance before it for the credit to have been the right call.

Then the risk, plainly: if rates climb, that refinance may never come. It’s worth knowing how I decide when a refinance pays for itself before you count on one.

How a 2-1 buydown works (and 3-2-1 and 1-0)

A temporary buydown lowers your payment for the first years of the loan, then steps up to the full note rate. Read the digits as years. A 2-1 means year one is 2 percentage points below the note rate, year two is 1 point below, and the full rate starts in year three. A 3-2-1 adds a third year. A 1-0 is one year at 1 point below.

The money is spent up front. Whoever pays for it funds an account at closing, and each month that account tops up the difference between your discounted payment and the real one. The cost of the buydown is the sum of those top-ups.

Here’s the part that matters most: plan on qualifying at the full note-rate payment, not the year-one payment. On every buydown file I’ve done, that’s how the buyer was underwritten, from day one. It’s the right way to think about it anyway. The early savings are a cushion, not a stretch. If the house only works at the year-one payment, it doesn’t work.

Who pays? Somebody has to fund it, just not you. On a purchase it’s normally the seller or the builder, written into the contract as a concession, and some lenders let a lender credit help. Which loans allow a buydown, and how it counts against the program’s limit on seller money, depends on the program and the lender, so I confirm both before an offer goes in. To see the cost on your own loan amount and rate, use the temporary buydown calculator.

Seller-paid buydown vs a price cut: one pot of money, four jobs

When a seller is willing to give, the same dollars can do four different jobs. Here’s $10,500, which is 3% of a $350,000 price, on a 5% down loan at an example note rate of 6.5%.

Monthly principal and interest on a 30-year fixed, at example rates. The permanent row assumes each point buys a quarter of a percent of rate, the low end of what I saw on 2026 price sheets. Taxes and insurance are extra.

The price cut does the least for the payment. Knock $10,500 off the price and you’re a great negotiator who saved $63 a month. The closing-cost credit leaves the payment alone but cuts what you bring to the table, up to your actual closing costs and prepaids. The permanent buydown saves $161 a month for as long as you keep the loan. The 2-1 saves $417 a month in year one and $214 in year two, then nothing, and it still leaves $2,932 for closing costs.

So which one? It comes down to how long you’ll keep the loan. With these numbers, the permanent buydown’s savings catch up to the 2-1 at about month 47, just under four years, or about month 62 if you count the extra closing-cost help the 2-1 leaves over. Expect to refinance in the first few years, and the 2-1 wins. Plan to keep the loan longer, and the permanent buydown does. On a 2-1, start watching for a refinance window as year two ends.

That’s why I price every option the same day, side by side, and let the buyer pick. My read on late 2026 is that this isn’t a seller’s market, which makes seller money one of the strongest tools a buyer has. Two rules apply to all of it. The credit has to be written into the contract, worded so it can cover closing costs, prepaids, discount points and a temporary buydown. And the home still has to appraise at the contract price, because the price didn’t drop. How to build that offer, and each program’s cap on seller money, is on the financing side of a winning offer.

Before you look at a single rate, write down how long you honestly expect to keep this loan. That one number decides almost everything on this page.