I spoke with a guy at lending tree, and said i was looking at a 185k house with about 50k down on a 15 year mortgage. He said closing costs would likely be 5k. But when i asked the realtor, she said 5-6% which would be about 7-8k or so. What would it be?
You can ask the lending agent for a breakdown. Then show it to the agent and see what's missing, if anything.
I would usually estimate about 2% of the purchase price for closing costs and another 1 to 1.5% of the loan amount for loan closing costs.
What's in there? For the loan, you'll have:
origination fee: defaults to 1%, but you can pay more for a lower interest rate. Sometimes less if you take a higher interest rate.
underwriting fee: $500 plus or minus. somewhat negotiable
doc prep fee: a few hundred, also somewhat negotiable
various other fees: maybe a hundred
lender's title policy: variable, but something like half a percent of the loan amount
Property closing:
inspection fees: few hundred.
appraisal: $500 more or less. The lender will require this, but I put it here since you may want it even without a lender.
various recording fees: highly variable, maybe a few hundred
prepaid insurance: typical a full year plus two months. The full year pays for the initial policy and the two months starts the escrow
prepaid taxes: some number of months. What makes sense to me is the number of months already passed in the year plus a month or two. Taxes for one year are paid in spring of the next year, so the escrow account needs to contain a fully year's taxes at the point where they must be paid. But the actual amount a lender requests almost seems random. Note that you will get a credit from the seller for Jan 1 to the date of closing, so you can think of that credit as just going directly into your escrow account.
Title company fees: a few hundred
Misc fees: photocopying, courier, fedex, etc., etc., etc.
Some locations have various transfer or sales taxes, too, which can add a hefty chunk.