A refinance is a new loan paying off your old one, usually to capture a lower rate and payment, sometimes to pull cash from your equity. In most cases you requalify from scratch: income, credit, and the home's value all get documented again, because a brand-new loan is replacing the old one. The exceptions are the streamline programs: - FHA Streamline: the standard non-credit-qualifying version skips the appraisal and the income re-verification, but the new loan has to pass the program's net tangible benefit test. - VA IRRRL: ordinarily no appraisal and no income verification, though a materially higher payment or an extended term can trigger a fuller review. On whether a refinance is worth doing, a rule of thumb we like as a starting filter: divide 125,000 by your loan amount, and that is roughly the rate improvement you need to justify it. On a $500,000 loan, about a quarter of a percentage point. On a smaller loan you might need close to a full point, because the fixed costs of the refinance eat up more of a smaller balance. The real decision goes past the filter: how long you will keep the loan, whether you are resetting the term (we lean against resetting to a fresh 30 unless you are deliberately choosing the lowest payment), and what the closing costs actually run. That is exactly what we map out on the free Roadmap conversation, about 20 minutes where we run your real numbers.