Costs associated with buying a home?

[Stephen Spradley]

So, having never been a homeowner before, I'm wondering aside from the down payment, what are the other costs accrued in the home buying process? I believe I read somewhere that you should usually have at least a grand or two set aside for all the closing costs, how accurate is this?

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @Stephen Spradley:

So, having never been a homeowner before, I'm wondering aside from the down payment, what are the other costs accrued in the home buying process? I believe I read somewhere that you should usually have at least a grand or two set aside for all the closing costs, how accurate is this?

 Hi Stephen,

That's a market-specific question, but "a grand or two" is unlikely to be sufficient.

Local to me in Berkeley for example, there is a transfer tax of $15 per $1k purchase price. So on a normal $800k purchase, boom there's $12k in closing costs right there. The seller may agree to cover half, so that's $6k left for you.

A lender in your area will be able to talk about location-specific strategies to deal with this.