DocuTech announced in February that the median closing cost among the company’s nationwide lender base decreased by 0.5 percent on a baseline from April to November 2012. The findings are the first of a quarterly tracking effort to highlight how changes in the mortgage industry are impacting the cost for consumers to close loans.
In April 2012, the median closing costs of all loans with disclosure and closing documents generated through DocuTech’s system was 3.112 percent of the loan value. Following a small uptick in May, reaching 3.176 percent, the median closing cost dropped each month settling into a low during November at 2.521 percent.
“With the many fees and points associated with closing costs, as well as constant regulatory changes, the consumer is sometimes faced with higher settlement charges than they previously anticipated,” said Scott K. Stucky, chief operating officer. “With the quarterly disclosure of these statistics, we seek to reveal various trends in settlement charges to highlight the upfront costs associated with closing loans and how industry changes impact the consumer.”
DocuTech is able to track the closing costs through the strong integrations between its document compliance system, ConformX, and lenders’ loan origination software. The data files are transmitted from the lender to DocuTech through the loan origination system to generate the documents. As such, DocuTech has access to a significant amount of financial data regarding mortgage lending transactions including all of the fee and collateral information.
“A decrease in price when dealing with loans is never a bad thing,” said Stucky. “This steady decline should ease the industry’s level of uncertainty with the CFPB set to announce new rule requirements for the remainder of 2013.”