Closing Costs when buying a house or condo

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Bo Knows Real Estate

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In addition to the mortgage, and down payments, anyone buying a house or a condo will need to come up with 'Closing Costs'. These include legal fees, Land Titles Taxes, Property Taxes and Home Insurance costs, in addition to possibly others. Never miss an episode. Install our FREE Podcast App available on iOS and Android. For your Apple Devices, click here to (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/winnipeg-real-estate-news/id1098802561) For your Android Devices, click here to (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bokauffmann.android.winnipeg&hl=en) [00:00:00] When buying a house or condo, what and how much are closing costs? We'll look at that next. [00:00:05][5.4] [00:00:09] You're listening to the Bo Knows Real Estate Podcast tips and advice for home buyers, sellers and owners with award winning Remax agent Bo Kauffmann. [00:00:19][9.9] [00:00:25] So in this episode, I want to take a look at what the additional costs are when buying a house or condo. And what we're going to see that it doesn't really matter whether it's a house or a condo. The costs are virtually identical with just the one main exception. And these are also the costs that a buyer has to come up with in the form of cash. They cannot be lumped into the mortgage or in the form of a loan. You could have an overdraft in your checking account that you used to pay for these, but basically you have to come up with that money at the time of possession. [00:00:56][31.5] [00:00:57] So we're not talking about CMHC fees. Those can be lumped into the purchase price. So, for example, a 300,000 dollar house fee putting five percent down your mortgage, you would expect it to be 285,000. That's three hundred minus 5% leaves two hundred eighty five thousand. However, with CMHC fees, you're going to quickly find that your mortgage is actually in the low to ninety two, ninety three, something like that. So we're not talking about those costs, we're talking about the additional costs you have to come up with at the time of possession. [00:01:28][31.0] [00:01:29] And they are basically four different things. First one is legal fees. We're going to talk about land titles, transfer tax. We will talk about property tax and home insurance. Now, there are other things like a mortgage insurance, which is optional. There's moving costs if you choose to do those. But those first four are pretty much mandatory. You have to have home insurance. You have to pay the taxes, the legal fees and the property taxes as well. [00:01:57][28.0] [00:01:58] So let's take a look at legal fees first. If you Google legal services. I'm sure you're going to find lawyers advertising, you know, a 399, 499 to buy a house. But there's fine print involved in all of those. And that is plus disbursements. And it's those disbursements that are really going to add up. What are disbursements? [00:02:18][20.0] [00:02:19] Anything from office fees, secretarial fees, photocopying rubber bands and staples all the way up to registering the mortgage on the title, which is usually about $200 and getting title insurance. Highly recommended. And that's about 250 to 300 dollars. So by the time it's all said and done, a buyer should budget between 12 and 15 hundred dollars for legal fees when buying a house or a condo to air on the side of caution. I would even advise to budget around fifteen hundred dollars. [00:02:53][33.9] [00:02:56] The next thing is the dreaded land titles transfer tax. And I used to think that Manitoba was the worst in Canada, but I recently talked to somebody who's moving to British Columbia and their rates are pretty much the same. So this these rates were set many decades ago and that's why you have things like or the first thirty thousand dollars are free, while $30,000 might have bought a house in the late 60s or mid 70s even, but certainly not today. So as a baseline, let me tell you that a 200,000 dollar house costs $1,720....