Author Topic: Closing costs  (Read 4950 times)

ender

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Closing costs
« on: June 10, 2016, 07:16:13 AM »
I'm curious what other folks paid for closing costs. We're buying a house and are paying about $1800 in pure closing costs (for 3.625% / 30 year fixed) - processing fees, appraisal, etc. I am NOT including prepaid insurance/interest/taxes/escrow items in this number.

Main reason I am interested is I just saved a friend close to $1k by referring him to our provider (which also will give us a $150 discount not included in the below totals), which makes me wonder if we could have saved similarly had we gone with a different provider. Ours seemed reasonable at least particularly when compared to their much higher expected costs.

Here is the breakdown for a house about $230k:

$825 - processing fees
$400 - apprasial
$61 - credit report
$10 - flood certification
$71 - recording fees

$210 - title abstracting
$110 - title guarantee
$180 - title opinion

$1867 total
« Last Edit: June 10, 2016, 07:29:29 AM by ender »

rubybeth

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #1 on: June 10, 2016, 07:20:03 AM »
Following. But also, aren't closing costs based on the amount of the mortgage?

JLee

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #2 on: June 10, 2016, 07:22:41 AM »
I just looked up my estimate from 2013 (I think it was fairly close to the final total):

Processing fees $1299
Appraisal fee $425
Recording Services Fee $60
Settlement or Closing fee $290
Owners title insurance $1013
Lenders title insurance $507
Fedex/courier fees $60
Edoc/wire fee $40
Title Endorsement fee $100
Recording fee $60

Total $3854

ender

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #3 on: June 10, 2016, 07:26:54 AM »
Following. But also, aren't closing costs based on the amount of the mortgage?

In our case, for our lender, it doesn't seem so as the costs they quoted my friend was the same as ours.

My guess is for certain aspects (such as appraisal) they may require you to pay more for larger homes.  I updated the OP with my information and the actual mortgage cost.
« Last Edit: June 10, 2016, 07:28:52 AM by ender »

Mr. Green

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #4 on: June 10, 2016, 07:45:57 AM »
The closing costs you list are about as cheap as they get. The only way it gets cheaper from there is if you somehow don't have to do an appraisal or the bank gives you a stellar deal on the processing fees. $825 in processing fees is fairly standard I believe.

HPstache

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #5 on: June 10, 2016, 08:38:39 AM »
I agree... these are good closing costs, at least compared to the 3 or 4 times I've gone thru closing.  The appraisal cost is very fair... ours are usually $600-$700

KCM5

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #6 on: June 10, 2016, 08:45:43 AM »
I'm curious what other folks paid for closing costs. We're buying a house and are paying about $1800 in pure closing costs (for 3.625% / 30 year fixed) - processing fees, appraisal, etc. I am NOT including prepaid insurance/interest/taxes/escrow items in this number.

Main reason I am interested is I just saved a friend close to $1k by referring him to our provider (which also will give us a $150 discount not included in the below totals), which makes me wonder if we could have saved similarly had we gone with a different provider. Ours seemed reasonable at least particularly when compared to their much higher expected costs.

Here is the breakdown for a house about $230k:

$825 - processing fees
$400 - apprasial
$61 - credit report
$10 - flood certification
$71 - recording fees

$210 - title abstracting
$110 - title guarantee
$180 - title opinion

$1867 total

Our closing costs were this almost exactly. In 2012 on a house we paid $85,000 for.

This was with US Bank.

forummm

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #7 on: June 10, 2016, 09:36:31 AM »
Mine were free or slightly negative because I took a slightly higher interest rate and got a rebate from the lender. Over the time I will be in the mortgage (<10 years), the NPV of the extra interest is smaller than the rebate (plus investment returns) I got.

ketchup

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #8 on: June 10, 2016, 09:40:39 AM »
Mine were about $3K on a $99,000 purchase just over a year ago.  Chicago suburbs.

gardeningandgreen

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #9 on: June 10, 2016, 09:44:37 AM »
Following. But also, aren't closing costs based on the amount of the mortgage?

Some of the closing costs are somewhat related to the amount of the loan. Some are just a flat fee like the flood certification, credit report, and recording fees. Also the appraisal is only slightly more expensive the larger the house so kind of a flat fee there.

ender

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #10 on: June 10, 2016, 11:21:39 AM »
Mine were free or slightly negative because I took a slightly higher interest rate and got a rebate from the lender. Over the time I will be in the mortgage (<10 years), the NPV of the extra interest is smaller than the rebate (plus investment returns) I got.

I'm curious about this, did you ask for what discounts you could get if you had a higher rate?

forummm

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #11 on: June 10, 2016, 12:27:44 PM »
Mine were free or slightly negative because I took a slightly higher interest rate and got a rebate from the lender. Over the time I will be in the mortgage (<10 years), the NPV of the extra interest is smaller than the rebate (plus investment returns) I got.

I'm curious about this, did you ask for what discounts you could get if you had a higher rate?

They do it with points or rebate points. I'm sure you've heard that you can pay "points" and get a lower rate--"buy down" your rate. Well, this is just the opposite. Check out aimloan.com. Without entering any personal info you can pick the rate and corresponding closing costs for any loan info you enter.

merula

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #12 on: June 10, 2016, 12:46:29 PM »
How apropos, I just made a spreadsheet on this. I had quotes from 5 different lenders and wanted to compare them.

Lender 1Lender 2Lender 3Lender 4Lender 5
Admin/Process/UW fee1,2401,0459735251,049
Appraisal500450490500450
Credit report4755202017
Flood cert1377516
Tax Service fee00752495
Total1,8001,5571,5621,0741,627

The title/settlement fees varied by $1,000, but they're theoretically shoppable. Easier said than done, though. It took weeks of me hounding the title company my realtor recommended. "Can you please send me what your prices are for settlement and title insurance?" "We don't have that yet. You'll get your final closing costs 3 days before closing." "Yeah, I know you don't have that information. All I want is your costs, what you charge." "We're waiting on information for the lender."

I had to put on my Angry Merula voice and threaten to go elsewhere.

What I ended up with was:
Settlement fee: 795
Owners title insurance: 291
Lenders title insurance: 540
« Last Edit: June 10, 2016, 12:48:13 PM by merula »

ender

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #13 on: June 11, 2016, 07:36:56 AM »
Also... I think that we're going to find better homeowners insurance.

Amica's bundled for auto/homeowner's looks way less expensive than our current provider will match.

Dicey

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #14 on: June 11, 2016, 10:24:00 AM »
Tagging so I can find this later. Just closed on a house last week. I'll look it up in a bit and report back.

Dicey

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #15 on: June 11, 2016, 11:20:22 PM »
Reporting back, sheepishly.

I've reviewed the documents and they're clear as mud. Seems like we were charged for some stuff and then the lender credited us back. As near as I can tell, our total costs were $1226.36. Purchase price $335k, loan amount $250k. No points paid. Interest rate 4.25%, as it's a rental property. Sorry, I despite the freshness of this data, it doesn't appear to be nearly as useful as I'd hoped. Blech.

Axecleaver

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #16 on: June 12, 2016, 08:36:04 AM »
This will vary quite a bit depending on where you're buying. Our county charges sellers a massive 1% transfer tax. NY title costs are fixed, you can shop for different companies, but they're required by law to charge the same amount. As it turns out this makes title insurance MORE expensive, not less, because the state fixes the costs by figuring out what the least efficient provider requires to not lose money (including an "allowed profit" calculation). If you're running an efficient business, you just end up making more money, not passing it on to the consumer. Yay for government intervention?

I paid

$450 - processing fees
$400 - apprasial
$39 - credit report
$1278 title (!) and this is just the lender's title fee, I didn't buy owner's title insurance.

ender

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Re: Closing costs
« Reply #17 on: June 12, 2016, 11:27:13 AM »
Reporting back, sheepishly.

I've reviewed the documents and they're clear as mud. Seems like we were charged for some stuff and then the lender credited us back. As near as I can tell, our total costs were $1226.36. Purchase price $335k, loan amount $250k. No points paid. Interest rate 4.25%, as it's a rental property. Sorry, I despite the freshness of this data, it doesn't appear to be nearly as useful as I'd hoped. Blech.

That still seems pretty good, though it depends on whether the credits/prepaid stuff is added to closing costs.

We got a 1-year tax "proration" benefit (our taxes are paid 1 year in arrears) which was almost exactly what our prepaids were, but if we don't do escrow (we won't be doing this) it ends up with the closing costs being negative as a result :-)