Did I get ripped off by the title company?

[Marcello Di Gerlando]

Last January my wife and I came into some money and we decided to pay cash for our first home. We negotiated a little with the former owners and settled on fair value for the property. (We offered to pay closing costs of which there would be none) and we agreed not to put any money in ESCROW as we would pay taxes and insurance separately which we did.

Being in the military I was on a training event during closing. I processed the necessary power of attorney for my wife to be able to close the sale. Which worked out fine.

The issue I have and I hope someone on BP can help me clarify is this. The Title company charged us somewhere in the region of $1200 (sorry don’t have the exact figure I’m serving overseas and don’t have access the documents). One of the line items on the Title company’s bill was for an ESCROW account for which they charged us $900. What gives? we didn’t open an ESCROW account. I called the Title company some time after the sale closed and inquired about it. They gave me a pretty vague answer about it being a standard service charge. Everything else was line itemed what they charged us for, so it’s still not clear what the charge was for.

As well as being excited about our first home, I was also preparing for a long deployment overseas, so the $900 I was out was not of a big concern at the time.
None the less I would like to hear from anyone with experience closing all cash deals with no ESCROW and what you typically pay the title company in fees and what those fees entail.

Did I get jacked or is this normal?

I plan on buying an investment property when I return and I don’t want to make rooky mistakes. Thanks to BP for sharing the knowledge.