[...] purchased our first home.  As long as we own this home, we’re going to have to pay property taxes to the county, [...]

[...] please go here to see how the whole mortgage search process went. During that time I discovered the Bank of [...]

[...] Our new town home and the loan closing process [...]

Yes, I only had to pay $498. Nice. But in my opinion, $5,498 for closing costs on a $200k home is very high. Originally, the builder marketed the deal to me with the $5,000 to be used wherever I wanted (on the cc, on the price of the home, ect…) At that time I thought, there’s no way there using all 5k for the cc. But, they came pretty close. I was a little peeved at first. I wish they’d of just said they’d cover the cc no matter what they were. I swear, you can’t purchase anything large (wedding, car, house) without dealing with a bunch of BS like this. I’m glad it’s over.

Yes, they must have determined that it was the better value. I’m suprised they didn’t try to directly compete. I think they saw that I had $5000 off with the other lender and just threw a give up number out there to call what they thought was a bluff.

Thanks for all your valuable comments.

So if I read your post carefully, you only paid $498 dollars out of pocket for the loan with DHI?

$5,498 closing costs -$5,000 credit = $498?

If so, then yes a better deal with DHI.

But if you paid $5,498 w/ DHI and BofA was offering $3,731 – then BofA would have been better for a few reasons.

A – Points are tax deductible.
B – Obviously, fees were less.

BofA must have thought it was a better value or else then would not have sent the check, right?

Inside Tip: DHI was probably able to offer you a better deal for this simple reason. If you purchased the home directly from the builder, they actually saved money having no need to pay a 2-5% co-broker fee to a real estate agent. (if you want to check, call the builder asking if you can bring your agent to represent you. If they say yes, then they have the real estate commission built in.) Therefore they past some of the fee’s back to you as an incentive but it’s really built into their price.

What I find more interesting is that the “terms” you expected based on advertising vs. the terms offered. As you indicated, you were expecting $0 fee’s but instead these fee’s were masked in the form of discount points.

It’s interesting to think how many people would have applied with BofA with the same expectation as you due to unclear advertising claims. Note how difficult it was to find the “terms” of directly from the BofA site.

I have followed this for some time starting with this Inman blog post ( http://blog.inman.com/inmanblog/2007/05/loss_leader_mor.html ) and did a post regarding this exact issue regarding expectation…

http://www.mortgage-info.com/blog/2007/12/example-of-why-reading-fine-print-of.html

Maybe your blog post here ( http://blog.inman.com/inmanblog/2007/10/bofas-no-fee-lo.html ) regarding the missing refund help get you your refund?

Congratulations.