LENDERS PLAN MORE PREPAYMENT OFFERS.

Byline: Kenneth R. Harney

Home buyers and refinancers nationwide are likely to get a new carrot dangled in front of them when they apply for a fixed-rate mortgage this year: Discount rates and fees, if borrowers agree not to pay off their loan within the first several years - and are willing to pay a cash penalty if they do.

The deal your lender offers may sound something like this: Instead of your paying our standard 30-year fixed rate of 7.5 percent, we'll knock a quarter of a percentage point off that quote, or we'll pay $1,500 of your closing costs, if you lock yourself in with our no-prepayment pledge. The pledge commits you to pay a preset penalty if you pay off more than 20 percent of the mortgage within 36 months of the closing date. On a $150,000 loan balance with a 2 percent penalty, for example, that would translate into a $2,400 early-payoff charge.

Are you willing to take a risk of that size in exchange for a lower rate or reduced fees on your loan? Dozens of large mortgage lenders are pondering that question at the moment. Some of the biggest - the Bank of America and Countrywide Funding among others - are convinced that thousands of borrowers will say yes, if the deal makes economic sense.

Here's what's coming your way, and how you can evaluate lenders' potentially confusing offers when you run into them. According to officials at the two largest investors in American home mortgages - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - lenders are gearing up to introduce optional prepayment loan programs early in 1996. Though some California banks have included prepayment clauses with rate discounts on adjustable-rate mortgages for several years, virtually no major lenders in the country routinely have marketed them with fixed-rate mortgages.

Countrywide Funding, the nation's highest-volume independent mortgage banker, confirms that it is looking at a fixed-rate program with a one-quarter percentage point discount off its regular rates. Bank of America is putting the final touches on a fixed-rate program that could offer rate discounts or reduced closing costs as incentives.