topic Closing Costs in Mortgage Loans

Closing Costs

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:45:10 GMT

When requesting for the seller to pay closing costs do you ask when you place your offer or after it is accepted?

Re: Closing Costs

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:05:49 GMT

I included it with the original offer. If your initial offer is accepted, 1 in a million chance the seller will change their mind.

Re: Closing Costs

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 02:06:54 GMT

You ask as part of the offer. You put together a Purchase & Sales Agreement with an offer price and all conditions (closing costs, appliances, closing date, etc). I highly recommend putting in a specific amount of time to respond, we put 48 hours because we wanted a quick close.

To the seller the money is essentially all coming from the same place so if you need more closing costs covered, offer a lower sales price.

Prior to putting in an offer on a specific property, ask your lender to give you a figure for closing costs on that particular property. Then you'll know exactly how much you need to close when negotiating a price and conditions.

Re: Closing Costs

ShanetheMortgageMan — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:10:15 GMT

When you make an offer on a property, and the seller accepts those exact terms, you are obligated to purchase the property under those terms. So if you didn't ask for the seller credit in the first place, and the seller accepted your offer without asking for it, you both would need to agree on adding the seller paid closing costs after the fact. Now put yourself in the sellers shoes, if you just accepted a contract for $100k without you paying any of the buyer's closing costs, netting you a profit out of the transaction you were expecting, and then afterwards the buyer's ask for you to pay their closing costs - odds are you won't be agreeing to giving up some of the profit on the sale since you already have a contract that both parties agreed to. This is why it is very important to make sure your offer is exactly how you want it to be, there isn't changing anything after the fact.

Re: Closing Costs

Jazzzy — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:03:57 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
When requesting for the seller to pay closing costs do you ask when you place your offer or after it is accepted?

You've gotten good advice. The only thing I would add is that, if asking for closing costs, ask for a set dollar amount, such as, "Seller to pay $x,xxx towards buyers costs at closing." No ambiguity.

When my daughter recently purchased her 1st home, she wanted $3,000 in closing costs from the seller. One of the counters back from the sellers said that the sellers were "To pay up to 3% of closing costs." The house was priced at $135k. Our agent said, "3%...that could mean up to about $4,000."

No....

This is so ambiguous. Up to 3% ??? Of closing costs ??? If your "closing costs" are $3,000...do you know what "up to 3% of closing costs" is? It's $90.

I don't know if it was an innocent mistake in wording, but it could have cost our daughter thousands.

Be very, very careful how this is worded. Land on a dollar amount. We had what we thought was $3,000 almost turn into $90. We caught it in time.

Nail it down BEFORE you sign an agreement so that everyone knows where they stand.