Home Buying Fees You Might Not Know About

The buying process is complicated, super complicated. There are all sorts of variables and things to look out for. One of those things are fees. We all know that buying a house is expensive but what do you actually have to pay for besides the house itself?

Application Fee

Ah, applications. You need to pay this to even start the process. This is a fee the lender charges you… because they can honestly. You can ask for a breakdown of the application fee and might get a little more information but mostly it's an unavoidable nonsense fee that you should expect.

The Home Inspector

I hear what you’re thinking and no, you can’t skip it. Inspectors are what stand between you and utter ruin. They are your champion in the house buying process. Structural issues, mold, roofing, anything that could go wrong, they’re the experts that keep you from being buried under a pile of problems. That can all come to at an easy payment of 300 to 500 dollars. Yes, you still have to pay them if you decide not to buy the house.   

Appraisal Report Fee

This appraisal report fee is also charged by your lender… figures. This one actually goes towards something though. This one pays for the lender to appraise the cost of the house in question so that the buyer, a.k.a you aren’t paying more than the house you’re trying to buy is worth. This costs between 200 and 425 dollars. At least this fee does something useful.

Title Service Fees

Title Service fees covers several different services. Appraisal covers a lot of the necessary government paperwork. Searching public records for the houses title, notary for the person bearing witness to the signing of documents, government filing, etc. This will cost you between 150 and 400 dollars all together.

Lenders Organization Costs

Knock, knock. Who’s there? Your lender with another fee for you. Nope, not very funny unfortunately it’s not a joke. This is an upfront fee for processing the application (yes, the obligatory application fee doesn’t cover this), underwriting (researching your loan), and funding the loan. I really don’t get it either but either way it’s gonna cost you somewhere between .5% and 1.5% of your total loan.

Survey Report

Literally this is just a report that shows you the boundaries of the property, features and dimensions. It costs between 150$ and 400$.

Tax Payment Fee

Here we’ll end with a light one that won’t hurt your soul as much. Tax payment fee basically insures that tax payments on the property are up to date and that the payments you make are appropriately credited to the right home. This costs you about 50$.

So… I’m sure your super discouraged after seeing all of these fees and the numbers that go along with them. Here’s the thing, print out all of your documents, go over them, ask an obnoxious amount of questions you might be able to haggle down the prices of some of them. BE SURE YOU’RE GETTING THE BEST PRICE POSSIBLE! There are far too many fees to have necessary amounts of money taken from you for any of them.