How to Negotiate Finance Charges on a Mortgage

Whether you're buying a new home or refinancing your current one, you can save a lot of money by knowing which lender fees you can negotiate. These finance charges can add up to a lot of money. Many times the lenders will waive them simply at your request. Keep reading to find out how to negotiate these finance charges.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Request a credit report and clear up any mistakes on it before you go in to negotiate the finance charges. Lenders will often charge you a fee to get the credit reports themselves and may end up charging you more in fees if you have something unsatisfactory on your credit report, even if it may just be a mistake.
2. Inquire as to how much the lender wants to charge you for lender fees. Lender fees are the most negotiable fees during this process. They can usually be found in the 800 listing of the fees on the mortgage agreement and include administrative costs, wire-transfer costs, loan-origination fees and any other clerical fees the lender wants to charge.
3. Ask the lender to reduce or waive the loan-origination fee if you are a long-time customer in good standing. The loan-origination fee is usually 1 percent of the loan amount and is the basic fee that lenders charge for their services. Lenders don't usually waive this fee, but they may if they know they will lose your future business.
4. Call your title-search company to get the title reissued to you if you have bought a house in the last 5 years. This can end up saving you the fee for the lender to perform a new title search.
5. Tell the lender that you would like them to waive any administration, wire-transfer, clerical, credit report, commitment and application fees. These fees are charged to perform various sorts of paper-handling tasks performed by the lender. These fees are the most negotiable fees and many lenders will cover these costs themselves if you demand so.
6. Refuse to pay a waiver fee that the lender may charge if you don't have an escrow account or find your own insurance.
7. Review the fees that were charged to you on the HUD-1 form that is given to you before closing. Make sure that you question any additional fees and ask them to be waived, as well as verify that the agreed upon fees have been waived or credited.