San Francisco, this adds up to California savings. Make sure you and your Realtor are working with a good loan agent. It's OK to shop for one but more important to make a good choice and stick with it. Your Realtor can help with good loan officers he's worked successfully with in the past.
Now is a great time to refinance, mortgage rates may never be lower, and it's a great time to buy a home if you can find the one you want. It's a seller's market now in the Bay Area.
The average cost of closing on a mortgage has fallen by 7.4% over the past year, according to a recent survey by Bankrate.com. At the end of June, a homebuyer looking to close on a $200,000 mortgage with 20% down paid an average of $3,754, $300 less than 12 months earlier. The rates are great on a "conventional" mortage, one at $417,000. or less. Your broker can find you a Jumbo.
Included in those costs are origination expenses, such as application fees and the cost of doing credit checks, and third-party fees, such as those paid for title searches and insurance. Those should be estimated fairly acurately in advance.
The decline can be attributed to new regulations that require lenders to be more accurate when estimating closing costs for borrowers, said Greg McBride, Bankrate's senior financial analyst.
The regulation, which was put in place two years ago as part of the Real Estate Settlement Practices Act requires lenders to provide a "good faith estimate" of third-party fees that is within 10% of the actual amount the buyer will pay. It's one of the aspects of the Consumer Protection Act that really is being enforced. "The big drop in third-party fees indicates the lenders are doing a better job at estimating what the costs will be," said McBride.
In short you want a good Realtor and a very good lender to see you get the best available financing for all your real estate needs. Here's a good place to start:
North Bay Homebuyers
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