Our lean: put the credit toward closing costs and keep your flexibility, unless you're confident you'll hold this loan a long time. A permanent rate buydown is a sunk cost. Pay a couple of points, get a refinance window a year or two later, and that money is simply gone. Lenders price permanent buydowns precisely across huge pools of loans, assuming a break-even somewhere around five and a half to six and a half years on average. That's a pool average; for you as one borrower the break-even carries real uncertainty, which is why we never treat a buydown as the smart default. Using the credit for closing costs preserves your cash and keeps the refinance door open with nothing buried in the rate. A temporary buydown sits in between and has one genuine quirk: the funds sit in an escrow-style account subsidizing your payment, and any unused portion can effectively come back to you if you refinance before it's fully spent. A permanent buydown mostly makes sense when you're confident rates will stay elevated for the foreseeable future and no refinance window is coming, and nobody can promise either one. Match the choice to how long you'll realistically hold the loan. The side-by-side is something some people want to see, and we'll run that comparison for you in the free Roadmap conversation (about 20 minutes).