First Timer Series: Mortgage Fees

sirvogey - those fees sound about right. Every lender will be a slightly different. For example, we dont have both an application and commitment fee. We have a flat lender fee of $675-$775 depending on the price of the home. Bank attorney is usually closer to $800 and appraisal fro a property less than $1M should be closer to $500. You can try to negotiate getting fees waived or reduced but it also depends on the rate the lender is able to get you. sunny.hong@bankofamerica.com

You should speak with at least 2 Mortgage Brokers. I have 2 that are amazing.
Marc A. Nathan with DE Capital Mortgage, 646.423.7512
David Pfeffermann with TD Bank, 646.438.1210

Thanks.

How about title insurance for the lender? Is this req for co-ops as well?

Mortgage Broker here:

www.esfunding.instantlender.com

hofo- title ins isnt required for coops. They will do a lien search which will run about $300. sunny.hong@bankofamerica.com

I got a high balance conforming mortgage from Wells last year. I paid (I think) $795 for all the fees combined, including the appraisal. No points. Wells was nice and agreed to use my attorney as their attorney, so the additional charge for the bank attorney was only $300 as opposed to the standard $1000.

Title insurance is set by NY statute - if you google it you can find websites that will tell you exactly how much it will cost. Recall that you will need both an owner and a lender policy. The endorsements can vary from title company to title company and if I recall correct can add several hundred dollars.

When I closed, there were a bunch of fees I wasn't expecting. For example, my building required me to pay 1 month of common charges into the building's working capital fund. There were also application fees for the building (condo) that were about $500. There are also adjustments for common charges and taxes - for example, if you close on the 10th day of the month, the seller will have already paid common charges and taxes for that month so you will owe him/her common charges and taxes for 2/3 (or 20 out of 30 days) of the month. I also had to pay the following full month of interest and common charges up on closing (thus if you close on July 10, you pay August interest and common charges at closing). I also had to pay money up front to fund an escrow account that pays the RE taxes (I think about 2-3 months of RE taxes). There may have been a few others, but that is most of them. A lot of websites have listings but until I actually got the list from my attorney, I wasn't sure they all applied to me.

So why were you surprised that charges were pro-rated?

I hadn't thought about it. I'm not saying it was unreasonable; to the contrary, it makes perfect sense. I just hadn't given thought to all the fees.

So if you go to a broker who then provides you with - what seems like - a good rate, would there be any reason to also go to a bank knowing you have to pay these fees? What rate are people getting these days on different products??