Q1

Oppenheimer Bank is offering a 30-year mortgage with an APR of 4.97% based on monthly compounding. With this mortgage your monthly payments would be $1996 per month. In addition, Oppenheimer Bank offers you the following deal: Instead of making the monthly payment of $1996 every month, you can make half the payment every two weeks (so that you will make 52/2 = 26 payments per year). With this plan, how long will it take to pay off the mortgage if the EAR of the loan is unchanged?