Don’t Feel Like a Chump When You Close on Your New Mortgage

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Don’t Feel Like a Chump When You Close on Your New Mortgage

iStockphoto
By Beth Braverman
August 4, 2015

Mortgage closing costs dropped 7 percent over the past year, falling to $1,847 on a $200,000 loan, according to a new analysis by Bankrate.

Typical closing costs varied by state, ranging from $2,163 in Hawaii to $1,613 in Ohio. You can find the average rate for your state in the table below.

Lenders compete for business, so shopping around with at least three mortgage providers can help you reduce the fees associated with your loan. “Homebuyers have more say over closing costs than they think,” Bankrate Senior Mortgage Analyst Holden Lewis said in a statement.

Even as banks lower their mortgage fees, they’re increasing fees in most other categories, according to MoneyRates.com.

While lower mortgage fees are good news for homebuyers and those refinancing their loans, the average saving amount to just $140. That’s not much relative to the total costs associated with buying a house. The average down payment for homebuyers in the first quarter of 2015 was $57,710, for example.

Related: Want Your Own Home? Here’s How to Do the Math

The costs don’t stop once the buyers move in. On top of mortgage payments, homeowners face an average of more than $6,000 in additional costs related to their house, including homeowners insurance, property taxes and utilities.

The National Association of Realtors expects home prices to increase 6.5 percent this year to a median $221,900, which would put them at the same level as their 2006 record high.

For buyers, better news than the lower mortgage fees is that rates remain relatively low, falling to 3.98 percent last week, per Freddie Mac.

Closing costs

StateAverage origination feesAverage third-party feesAverage origination plus third-party fees
Alabama $1,066 $776 $1,842
Alaska $935 $922 $1,857
Arizona $1,208 $761 $1,969
Arkansas $1,057 $760 $1,817
California $937 $896 $1,834
Colorado $1,192 $719 $1,910
Connecticut $1,074 $960 $2,033
Delaware $904 $924 $1,828
District of Columbia $1,077 $718 $1,794
Florida $1,028 $778 $1,806
Georgia $1,058 $821 $1,879
Hawaii $1,033 $1,130 $2,163
Idaho $894 $788 $1,682
Illinois $1,080 $767 $1,847
Indiana $1,067 $770 $1,837
Iowa $1,161 $762 $1,923
Kansas $1,047 $753 $1,800
Kentucky $1,060 $737 $1,797
Louisiana $1,060 $817 $1,877
Maine $897 $830 $1,727
Maryland $1,093 $742 $1,835
Massachusetts $905 $851 $1,756
Michigan $1,072 $746 $1,818
Minnesota $1,067 $689 $1,757
Mississippi $1,046 $837 $1,884
Missouri $1,040 $792 $1,833
Montana $1,062 $855 $1,917
Nebraska $1,047 $770 $1,817
Nevada $1,002 $848 $1,850
New Hampshire $1,084 $750 $1,835
New Jersey $1,181 $913 $2,094
New Mexico $1,076 $876 $1,952
New York $1,032 $879 $1,911
North Carolina $1,036 $875 $1,911
North Dakota $1,045 $791 $1,836
Ohio $933 $681 $1,613
Oklahoma $1,027 $734 $1,761
Oregon $1,080 $785 $1,864
Pennsylvania $1,055 $678 $1,733
Rhode Island $1,093 $802 $1,896
South Carolina $1,058 $837 $1,895
South Dakota $1,055 $704 $1,759
Tennessee $1,033 $773 $1,806
Texas $1,031 $833 $1,864
Utah $909 $788 $1,697
Vermont $1,074 $862 $1,936
Virginia $1,050 $787 $1,837
Washington $1,077 $824 $1,901
West Virginia $1,067 $904 $1,971
Wisconsin $1,047 $723 $1,770
Wyoming $874 $814 $1,689
       
Average $1,041 $807 $1,847

Bankrate.com surveyed up to 10 lenders in each state in June 2015 and obtained online Good Faith Estimates for a $200,000 mortgage to buy a single-family home with a 20 percent down payment in a prominent city. Costs include fees charged by lenders, as well as third-party fees for services such as appraisals and credit reports. The survey excludes title insurance, title search, taxes, property insurance, association fees, interest and other prepaid items.

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How Snapchat Wants to Win the 2016 Election

By Millie Dent
June 26, 2015

Snapchat is getting a lot of attention for its presidential ambitions.

In an effort to both appeal to the youth vote and bolster its events coverage built on a growing volume of video posted by its users, the app recently posted a job opening for a Content Analyst in Politics & News.

The new hire will curate photos and videos for the app’s “Our Story” curated events coverage of the presidential race and other news events. That stories feature has already proven to be a massive success. On average, Snapchat’s Our Stories draws around 20 million people in a 24-hour window, director of partnerships at Snapchat, Ben Schwerin, told Re/code. The three-day story in April about Coachella, the music festival, generated 40 million unique visitors.

Political events might not be draws on that same scale, but Snapchat apparently believes its massive influence with younger Americans could attract millions millennials to engage in the political process at a time when voter turnout is at its lowest levels since World War II. In the 2012 mid-term election, the national turnout rate was 35.9 percent. Of that, only 13 percent were between the ages of 18 and 29.

Related: Can ‘Project Lightning’ Give Twitter a Fresh Jolt?

Boasting more than 100 million daily users, Snapchat is valued at $16 billion — giving it the reach and the financial clout to become a force in 2016 campaign coverage. About 60 percent of U.S. smartphone users aged between 13 and 24 have used the app, according to The Financial Times. The largest demographic of users is between the ages of 18 and 24 (45 percent), followed by those between 25 and 34 (26 percent).

To capitalize on that user base, Snapchat recently hired former CNN political reporter Peter Hamby to oversee its expanding news team. Snapchat wants to promote content from debates, rallies, appearances and other election events and allow users to follow along. But this isn’t purely an experiment in civic participation. Candidates can pay for political ads to appear on the social media app.

The social media app has an ace up its sleeve to incentivize candidates to purchase ads. The app already has age-gating technology and a form of geographic targeting. Originally put into place to make sure underage kids wouldn’t see alcohol ads, the age gate could be used to reach only voting-age users. The geographic targeting allows Our Stories to only be viewable by people in the same city or area, so politicians could target specific areas, especially ones in a tight race.

Snapchat, best known as the service that allows users to send disappearing photos, claims that ads inserted into “Our Stories” have an advantage over other social media advertisements because they leave more lasting impressions.

If campaigns buy into that and turn to Snapchat as a way to connect with a hard-to-reach demographic, the social media company could be the big winner in the 2016 election.

Coming Soon: Free Wi-Fi From Google’s Sidewalk Labs

Google’s latest startup wants to use technology to improve city life.

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Reuters
By Suelain Moy
June 25, 2015

Google is about to hit the streets with Sidewalk Labs, a Google startup that will focus on developing new technologies to improve urban life. Billing itself as an “urban innovation company,” Sidewalk Labs was founded to tackle urban problems such as housing, pollution, energy consumption, and transportation with the goal of making cities “more efficient, responsive, flexible and resilient.”

The first project? In New York City, LinkNYC will replace aging pay phones with slim, aluminum pillars that provide free high-speed Wi-Fi. The hubs also will allow people to charge their mobile devices and look up directions on touch screens. Qualcomm will be the wireless provider

Related: Why Google’s Internet Balloons May Be a $10 Billion Business

According to the Federal Communications Commission, 17 percent of the population, or 55 million people, in the United States don’t have access to high-speed broadband. Sidewalk Labs hopes that projects like LinkNYC can help bridge that gap.  

For the LinkNYC initiative, Google acquired and merged two companies -- Control Group and Titan -- into a new venture called Intersection, which aims to provide free, public Wi-Fi in cities around the world using such familiar urban infrastructure as bus stops and pay phones.

Related: Google Spends More Than Any Other Tech Giant to Influence Congress

Daniel L. Doctoroff, a former Bloomberg CEO and deputy mayor for New York City, has been tapped to head Sidewalk Labs. Doctoroff, who conceived the idea for Sidewalk Labs with a Google team headed by CEO Larry Page, told Wired, “The vision really is to make cities connected places where you can walk down any street and have access to free ultra high speed Wi-Fi. The possibilities from there are just endless.”   

Just don’t give us any automated, self-driving taxis, please.

Presidential Candidates Respond to SCOTUS Obamacare Ruling

REUTERS/The Fiscal Times
By Josh Stelzer
June 25, 2015

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling Thursday may have kept the health care law and its insurance subsidies in place, but that doesn’t mean Republican efforts to “repeal and replace” the law are done. Major GOP presidential candidates took to Twitter following the Supreme Court’s announcement to blast the high court’s decision. Here are their responses and those from the Democratic candidates.

This Is America’s Biggest Financial Fear

iStockphoto
By Beth Braverman
June 25, 2015

More than 60 percent of Americans are losing sleep at night because of financial concerns, and the biggest concern is that they’re not saving enough for retirement, according to a new report from CreditCards.com.

The second-biggest worry is about the cost of education, with half of those between the ages of 18 and 29 saying that concern keeps them up at night.

The percentage of Americans worried about education costs has been growing for the past eight years and is the only category that has become a bigger problem since the Great Recession. “Unless something slows the rapid rise in college costs, this could soon be Americans’ biggest financial fear,” CreditCards.com senior analyst Matt Schultz said in a statement.

Related: 12 Smart Money Moves Millennials Should Make Right Now

That echoes a Gallup poll released in April, which found that 73 percent of parents with kids under age 18 ranked paying for college as a financial worry, more than were concerned about saving for retirement or covering medical expenses.

Nearly one in three Americans are losing sleep because of medical bills, 27 percent are worried about their mortgage or rent payment, and 21 percent fret over credit card debt.

Older Americans and those with higher incomes seem to have fewer financial anxieties than younger generations. Less than half of those age 65 or older are losing sleep over their finances, versus more than two thirds of adults 64 or younger. Of those making less than $75,000 per year, 69 percent had financial worries, compared to just 51 percent of those making more than $75,000.

Millennials Still Don’t Trust the Stock Market

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Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg
June 24, 2015

Goldman Sachs has released the latest in a long line of surveys about millennials and money. The findings won’t shock you if you’ve seen other such surveys: millennials get financial advice from their parents, they’re less concerned with privacy, they still want to own a home … someday.

But one familiar finding may be worth highlighting. Even as the stock market reaches record highs, millennials by and large remain wary of investing. Fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed by Goldman said that stocks are “the best way to save for the future.” Another 45 percent said they’re willing to dip a toe in the market or to put money into low-risk options. More than a third of those surveyed said they don’t know enough about stocks or felt that the market is too volatile or too stacked against small investors.

Part of that may because many millennials haven’t yet reached the life stage or the level of financial stability that would lead them to consider investing. But the lingering scars of the recession are evident in the results, too — and financial institutions clearly have a long way go to restore the public’s confidence in them. For example, Gallup just published a report called, “Why It’s Still Cool to Hate Banks.”

Related: The Rise of a New Economic Underclass—Millennial Men​

Goldman didn’t release the details about how many millennials it surveyed or when (and it hadn’t yet responded to an email asking for those details by the time of publication), but the results it got are broadly in line with those of earlier surveys. And they’re another reminder that not everyone is benefitting from the stock market’s record-setting rally. Millennials are still missing out.

Here is a chart produced by Goldman Sachs summarizing the results of their survey: