Closing Costs Estimator

Purpose and model boundary

Use this calculator to itemise what you will be asked to pay on the day you close on a home, and to see how much of that bill is worth negotiating. It sorts every charge into three groups. Lender fees are origination, discount points and the appraisal. Third-party fees are title insurance, recording and anything else charged by someone other than the lender. Prepaid items are the months of property tax and homeowners insurance the lender collects in advance to open the escrow account. It then adds the down payment to give the cash you actually need to have available on the day.

The split is the point rather than a presentational choice. Only lender fees move much when you change lender; third-party fees are mostly set by where the home is; and prepaid tax and insurance are not a cost of borrowing at all, but money you owed anyway, collected early, which comes back to you as months when the escrow account pays the bill instead of you. A single combined total mixes the three and overstates what shopping for a lender can save.

The model boundary is narrow and it matters. Every rate and every fee is a number you supply. The calculator holds no fee schedule for any lender, title company or recording office, and it looks nothing up by state or county. It is an estimate built from your own figures, not a quote, and the documents that govern are the Loan Estimate your lender must give you after you apply and the Closing Disclosure that follows before closing.

The following are not modelled and will not appear in any figure on this page:

• Mortgage insurance. Below twenty percent down a conventional lender usually charges it, and it can carry a one-time up-front premium at closing as well as a monthly premium.
• The interest-rate reduction that discount points buy. Points are counted here as a cost only. The trade between a lower rate and the cash to buy it is a different calculation.
• Per-diem interest from the closing date to the first of the next month. It can be a few hundred dollars and it depends on which day you close.
• Escrow cushions beyond the months you enter. Lenders commonly hold an extra buffer on top of the months collected.
• Seller-paid costs beyond the single credits input, and the caps lenders place on how much of your costs a credit may offset.
• Transfer taxes in the states that levy them heavily, unless you enter them yourself in the other-fees input.
• Rate locks, lock extensions, and any fee charged after closing.
• Income tax. Nothing here is stated after tax, and no charge is treated as deductible or as added to basis.

Inputs and units

Three inputs are optional and ship blank rather than at zero: Points Paid, Other Fees and Credits Applied. A blank reads as zero everywhere it is used, so leaving all three blank gives the plain case of no points, no extra charges and no credit. Blank and zero produce identical figures; the difference is only that a blank says you have not answered yet.

Governing relationships

Write P for the purchase price, L for the loan amount, A for the appraisal fee, R for the recording fees, T for the annual property tax and I for the annual insurance premium. Write the origination rate as ro and the title insurance rate as rt, both held as shares of one rather than as whole numbers, so one percent is 0.01. Write n for the points bought, O for the other fees and C for the credits applied, each read as zero when left blank. Write mT and mI for the months of tax and of insurance collected up front.

The down payment is the part of the price you are not borrowing:

• down payment = P minus L

The three groups are each a plain sum, and the two bases are deliberately different:

• lender fees = L × ro + L × n / 100 + A
• third-party fees = P × rt + R + O
• prepaid items = (T / 12) × mT + (I / 12) × mI

Origination and points are charged on the loan. Title insurance is charged on the price. The two are not interchangeable, and the division by 100 in the points term is what makes one point equal one percent of the loan rather than one percent expressed as a share of one. On a loan of 280,000, one and a half points costs 4,200. Charging the same points against a price of 350,000 would give 5,250, which is the most common error in this category of calculation.

From the three groups:

• total closing costs = lender fees + third-party fees + prepaid items
• cost of borrowing = lender fees + third-party fees, which is the total less the prepaid items
• cash to close = down payment + total closing costs
• net cash to close = the larger of zero and (cash to close minus C)

Three ratios describe the result rather than adding to it. Each returns zero rather than failing when its denominator is zero or below:

• shoppable share = lender fees / total closing costs
• total as a share of the price = total closing costs / P
• down payment as a share of the price = down payment / P

The second chart is a sweep rather than a single answer. For each down-payment share s from 3 percent to 40 percent in one-point steps, the loan is re-derived as P × (1 minus s) and the cash to close is recomputed with every other input held where you left it. The line rises more slowly than the down payment alone would, because each extra dollar of down payment is a dollar less of loan, and the charges levied on the loan fall with it. A flat marker line sits at your own cash to close so you can see where your down payment lands on the sweep.

Calculation sequence

1. Apply the published input rules to every entry. A value outside its accepted range is rejected here and nothing is calculated.
2. Read the three optional inputs, treating a blank as zero for points bought, other fees and credits.
3. Calculate the down payment as the price less the loan.
4. Calculate lender fees: origination on the loan, points on the loan, then the appraisal added as a flat amount.
5. Calculate third-party fees: title insurance on the price, then recording and other fees added as flat amounts.
6. Calculate prepaid items: the annual tax divided by twelve and multiplied by the months of tax, plus the annual insurance divided by twelve and multiplied by the months of insurance.
7. Add the three groups to give total closing costs, and subtract the prepaid items again to give the cost of borrowing.
8. Add the down payment to the total to give the cash to close, then subtract the credits and floor the result at zero to give the net cash to close.
9. Calculate the three ratios: the shoppable share, the total as a share of the price, and the down payment as a share of the price.
10. Build the down-payment sweep that the second chart reads, and build the four-way split that the first chart reads.
11. Evaluate the status conditions below in order and return the first one that is true.

Outputs and interpretation

Three figures are the headline. Cash to close is what you need available on the day, and it is the figure people underestimate, because it carries the down payment as well as the fees. Total closing costs is the single number most estimators report, and it is the one to compare against another tool's total, remembering that tools differ in what they fold into it. The cost of borrowing is the total less the prepaid items, and it is the figure to put side by side between two lenders, because the prepaid tax and insurance would be owed whoever lent you the money.

The two charts read the same figures. The first splits the cash to close four ways, into the down payment and the three fee groups, so the relative size of each is visible at a glance. The second shows how the cash to close moves as the down payment share moves, with a flat marker at your own figure.

Validation and status logic

The workbook evaluates its status conditions in the order below and returns the first one that is true. Later conditions are never reached once an earlier one has matched, so the order is the precedence: a price of zero reports the price, even when the loan also exceeds it. The final row is the fallthrough that applies when nothing above it did.

Thirteen rows, and six of the outcomes can be reached from this page: a price of exactly zero, a loan larger than the price, each of the three CHECK conditions, and OK. The other seven all test for a negative amount, rate or month count, and the published input rules refuse every one of those entries before any calculation is attempted, so they never surface here. They are the workbook's own defences, and they matter when you download the workbook and drive it yourself, where those input rules do not apply.

Credits, coalesced in the tenth row means the credits input with a blank read as zero. Points Paid <> "" and Credits Applied <> "" in the eighth and ninth rows are the tests for an optional input that has actually been filled in, which is why a blank never triggers them.

The two CHECK conditions that follow the credits test are ordered as they are for a reason. A total above six percent of the price is reported before a down payment below twenty percent, so a case that trips both reports the larger total first.

Assumptions and limitations

• Every fee and every rate is an input. The calculator holds no fee schedule and looks nothing up, so the quality of the result is entirely the quality of the figures you enter. Take them from your own Loan Estimate.
• Origination and points are charged on the loan; title insurance is charged on the price. A tool that charges points on the price reads high by the down payment's share, and the two totals are not comparable without correcting for that.
• Points are counted as a cost only. The rate reduction they buy is not modelled, so this calculator cannot tell you whether buying points is worthwhile.
• Prepaid items are exactly the months you enter, with no lender cushion on top, applied to a flat annual bill divided by twelve rather than to a real tax calendar. A lender that re-estimates either annual amount will collect something different.
• Mortgage insurance is excluded in every state of the model, including the state where the status says a conventional lender would charge it. The estimate is understated there by both the up-front and the monthly premium.
• Per-diem interest from closing to the first of the next month is excluded, and it is not small. Closing early in a month costs more of it.
• Credits reduce the cash to close and never the costs themselves. The caps lenders place on credits are not modelled, and neither are seller-paid costs arranged any other way.
• The shoppable share counts lender fees only. Some third-party services, title insurance among them, can also be shopped, so the share is a conservative reading of what is negotiable rather than a complete one.
• The down-payment sweep in the second chart holds every fee input fixed while it varies the loan. A real lender may price origination differently at a different loan size.
• All figures are nominal dollars on the closing date, not adjusted for inflation and not stated after tax.

Restrictions and non-computing states

Every required input must be present, and each must sit inside its published range: the price, the loan, the appraisal, the recording fees and both annual amounts cannot be negative; both rates must be between zero and one hundred percent; and both prepaid month counts must be whole numbers from zero through twenty-four. The three optional inputs, points bought, other fees and credits, may be left blank or filled with a value of zero or more; points are additionally capped at ten.

The price must be above zero for the model to answer. A price of exactly zero is accepted by the input rules but returns NOT VALID, because a total as a share of the price has no meaning and the cash to close becomes a negative number that describes nothing. A loan larger than the price is also refused: that is a state this model does not handle, and it is refused rather than approximated.

Everything else computes. The three CHECK conditions are not refusals; they return every figure and add a sentence saying what to look at.

Errors and warnings

Three different things can go wrong, and they are not the same event.

A rejected entry happens before any calculation. A value outside its published range never reaches the calculation at all, the page names the input that is out of range, and no figure changes. Nothing was computed, so nothing is shown as zero.

A NOT VALID or CHECK status is the model's own finding about inputs it accepted. NOT VALID means the combination does not describe a question this model can answer, and the figures beside it should not be read as an estimate. CHECK means the arithmetic completed and every figure is real, but something deserves your attention: a credit larger than the cash you need, a total above six percent of the price, or a down payment below twenty percent where mortgage insurance would normally apply and is not included here. The status text names which one it is.

A connection or calculation-service failure is neither of those. It means the calculation could not be reached or did not return, and it says nothing about your inputs. It is a matter of availability, never a finding, and it is never reported as a zero or as a valid result. Retry it; if it persists, the figures on the page are stale and should not be used.

The three-way split this calculator uses follows the way the closing bill is already laid out for you. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's explainer for the Loan Estimate walks through the form section by section: origination charges, the third-party services you cannot shop for, the services you can shop for, and the other costs, which include taxes, government fees and the amounts collected in advance. That form, not this page, is the authoritative estimate, and the CFPB's what is a Loan Estimate states that a lender must provide one within three business days of receiving your application.

The cash-to-close figure and the prepaid items are described on the CFPB's explainer for the Closing Disclosure, which sets out the amount you will actually have to pay at closing, the prepaid interest and first-year insurance premium commonly paid in advance, the initial escrow payment that opens the escrow account, and the requirement that the Closing Disclosure reach you three business days before closing. For the charges themselves, the CFPB's what fees or charges are paid when closing on a mortgage names appraisal fees, title insurance, government taxes and prepaid expenses among them.

Points here are charged on the loan, never on the price. The CFPB's discount points and lender credits states that one point equals one percent of the loan amount, and describes lender credits as the same calculation in reverse, which is the kind of credit the credits input accepts.

Title insurance is grouped with the third-party fees and is charged here against the price. The CFPB's owner's title insurance distinguishes the lender's policy, which protects the loan, from the optional owner's policy, which protects your own stake, and notes that the provider can usually be shopped for separately from the mortgage.

The status warning below twenty percent down rests on the CFPB's private mortgage insurance, which explains that a conventional loan with a down payment under twenty percent of the purchase price may require it, and that it is sometimes charged as a one-time up-front premium at closing as well as monthly. This calculator does not include it, which is why the status names the gap rather than filling it.

Nothing here is stated after tax. For how settlement costs, points and real estate taxes are treated, see the Internal Revenue Service's Publication 530, Tax Information for Homeowners.

The arithmetic is not taken from any of these sources. Each group is a plain sum of the amounts and rates you enter, which is standard financial mathematics, and the delivered workbook carries its own validation sheet: component checks against an independent implementation written before the workbook, whole-model figures in the shipped state, and invariants that hold in any state, including one that pins the cost of an additional point at one percent of the loan.

These sources provide consumer context; they do not supply the figures you enter and they do not certify the result. This calculator is informational and is not financial, legal, tax, real-estate or lending advice. Confirm every charge and every credit against the Loan Estimate and the Closing Disclosure from your own lender and settlement professional.