Closing Costs Take 2!

Hello again! Hope everyone had a great holiday season. Lets jump right in, and finish this little mini-series on "Closing Costs". Today we will focus on the actual cost of getting a mortgage. As you may recall from "Take 1", this is the area where you want to focus on when shopping for a mortgage. Some of the fees will be the same regardless of where you get your mortgage, and some will vary from lender to lender.

Lets first look at the fees that would remain the same between lenders. Title insurance and mortgage tax are based on the loan amount, and would only change if the borrower were to put more or less money down on the house. The recording fee is the cost to put the mortgage on record at the county clerks office. The recording fee is not one thats dependent on the actual loan amount. Again, when looking at multiple good faith estimates, these three fees should be the same.

The other fees associated with the cost of getting a mortgage, is where we see a lot of variation bewteen lenders. Heres a list of the fees that are specifically from the lender and the average cost of each fee: appraisal fee ($275 for a single family house and $450 for 2-4 unit house), tax related service fee ($80), flood certification fee ($18), Admin fee/underwriting fee/commitment fee ($495), application fee ($200), courier fee ($30), and Bank attorney fee ($450). To give you an idea of the variation, I totaled these fees up from four lenders I work with, and here are the results: $1516, $1571, $1545, and $1539. As you can see, there is some difference between these four, but the difference is minimal.

Well that will just about wrap it up for closing costs for now, but if you have any questions, feel free to call or email me anytime. Also, if theres a specific topic you would like me to cover here in the blog, just let me know and I would be happy to write about it.