It's great to have you here on the Clark Howard Show where it's about you learning ways

to save more and spend less and don't let anyone ever rip you off.

So I wanted to tell you that there's a new fee coming or a mortgage refi and this is a

fee that was instituted by the Trump administration to go into effect in September.

The reason for this fee is there are worries that because of the recession we're on that

the number of people who are going to default on mortgages is going to rise.

So the new fee that will average about $1,500 on the typical refinance is essentially

building up a mad money fund to deal with the possibility of foreclosures on homes in

the future.

So this will apply to any new refinances which means that if you're already in process

you'll likely get closed and avoid this fee.

The more your home your refinance costs in terms of the amount of money of your mortgage,

the more you'll pay in fee because it's basically a flat half a percent surcharge or junk

fee on a refinance.

So this is going to make comparison shopping for mortgages a little more time consuming

on your part.

It means that there may be more situations where doing a no closing cost refi will work

out as a better choice for you than doing a traditional mortgage refi with closing costs.

If you're not familiar with no closing costs refi, it's not like the bank or credit union

or mortgage broker is just gifting you the closing costs.

What they're doing is you pay a higher interest rate than you would pay otherwise.

Historically that increased rate has been half a point to five eighths of a point in many,

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