Hello kryswithak!

Unfortunately, yes. It drives us Realtors® crazy as well! As Matthew indicated, you do get a Good Faith Estimate at the time you apply for your loan and this is usually a good ballpark. But the actual number is usually not given until 24 hours before closing.

To estimate the pre-paid taxes, you can look at the property tax bill from the Polaris system. This tells you what the taxes were for 2010. Then, divide that number by 365 to come up with a daily tax rate. Multiply the daily tax rate by the number of days left in the year beginning with the day of your closing. If your closing is this Friday, that would be 43 days left in the year. That should get you pretty close to your pre-paid taxes on the HUD form.

If your new mortgage is going to require you to escrow taxes, homeowners insurance, and mortgage insurance, you would need to factor this into your estimates as well. In this case, most lenders (although it can vary) require you to pay the first month's charge at closing, as well as to pay for an additional 2 months of these charges at closing to seed your escrow account.

You also would need to factor in any origination fees, discount points, and any other expenses that are to be paid at closing (such as the appraisal, attorneys fees, home inspection, title insurance, recording fees, courier fees, etc). The Good Faith Estimate your lender provided when you applied for the loan will be a good source of estimates for these types of charges.

I hope this is helpful.

All the Best,

Josie Mazzaferro
MBA, Broker/Realtor®
Allen Tate Company
cell: 704/965-1344
Josie.Mazzaferro@allentate.com http://www.JosieMazzaferro.com

Not at all! The lender should be very close when they give you your good faith estimate once you find the correct home. They have to be within a small percentage of the correct amount. The exact amount should be given to you 48 hours before closing, but should be very close to the good faith estimate.

You lender has dropped the ball. You should have you hud 48hrs in advance of the closing. If you are purchasing an REO or short sale you could run into problems because the sellers lender (in the case of a short sale) or the Bank (reo properties) usually want the HUd 2 days before. as they both have to approve the HUD and if you get it on the morning of the closing there is a good chance you will not close on time. Your GFE should be close and you agent should be able to figure out the prorated items for you.

Federal regulations require you have advanced notice of the closing costs. normally its about 2 days before closing in SC. You can go to your county tax system and get the estimate for the 2010 taxes on the property.

Krys,

So your "escrow" payment is that your earnest money? It sounds more like earnest money which is held typically in the listing brokerages trust account. At the time of closing it is applied to the purchase price. Since you have the address and closing date the lender should be able to give you a closer estimation on the closing costs though. You have to decide to escrow your property taxes which is one of the larger prepaids you would have.

Hope this helps,

Thanks everyone for your advice. I did receive a Good Faith Estimate. However the locked in interest rate is much lower and it doesn't have the taxes listed in there. Also I paid a escrow amount that the realtor told me to pay but the lender didn't say whether this would be enough. He just said I will probably get that check back and not have to pay any closing due to the seller paying up to $4500. No one seems to worry much about it so I guess I won't until Friday.

Per federal regulations your lender must send you a Good Faith Estimate within 3 business days of you applying for a mortgage. They cannot close in less then 7 business days of your receipt of the GFE. If your lender has not done this they you should report them to your AG. Prepaid tax is included on the GFE but usually incurrately You will take 14 months of real estate tax and then devide by 12 and times by 6 for the prepaid real estate escrow. You still need to pay back the seller prepaid taxes..

You should ahve received a good faith estimate. This would have given you the basic information of what you will need for closing. that number will change slightly once the actual day of closing is set. but you should have an approximate number within a few hundred dollars of what your actual closing costs will be.

You should have received a good faith estimate from your lender at the time of loan application. This GFE will have outlined everything you need to know within 95% accuracy. Anytime you changed anything in your loan product you should have received a new GFE. This is federal law. Ask your lender for a copy of the GFE.

Nina Hollander

Krys,
As Matthew stated you should have gotten a Good Faith Estimate at the time of your loan pre-approval and a fine tuned one at the time of your application. Josie stated correctly that it does change but as Matt noted the new Federal guidelines prohibit the lenders from adding any hidden costs or changing the closing cost by no more then a small percentage. They are not allowed to have it vary from the good faith estimate by no more then I believe three percent.

As far as your pre-paids you will have taxes, insurance and anything else you are planning on escrow. The taxes if they have not gone up will be easy. Simply take the tax amount from 2010 and divide it by 12. Then divided that number by 30. That will be your daily amount. Now depending on what day you are closing on simply multiply the daily rate by the number of days left in the month from the closing date. Sorry but if it is confusing simply ask your agent to give you the estimate.

Hope this helps,

You should have received an Estimated Closing Cost Sheet from your agent. They can calculate all this for you.

If you do not have an agent or are not represented, ask your lender to provide you with an estimated closing sheet. They are required by law to provide a good faith estimate.

Very interesting question. In the past that was pretty common. Last year there has been new regulation that requires disclosure of this information (to a certain degree of accuracy) by your lender on your Good Faith Estimate when you first applied for the loan. Your lender should have provided this to you already and you should review it with them. Having said that, it is quite normal to not get an exact dollar amount sooner than a couple of days before closing.

Congratulations on your purchase. It is a great time to buy!

Kind Regards,
Matthew Tringali
Owner of Group 15 Real Estate