I did my first RE investment deal today and had to pay over $1,000 in Doc stamps. I asked the clerk the following question and they did not have a clue. HELP!!!
If my seller had first transferred the property to an LLC and then the seller tranferred the LLCs share to me,would there be any Doc Stamps required ???
Someone sent me this a couple years ago…
Document Stamp- A State tax, in the forms of stamps, required on deeds and mortgages when real estate title passes from one owner to another.
The amount of stamps required varies with each State. I recently read a survey that showed expenses for refinance transactions local mortgage transfer taxes, document stamps and title insurance fees–vary heavily depending on the state you live in.
Florida, New York, Texas, and Pennyslvania charge much higher fees on mortgage refinances than the rest of the country.
For example a Florida homeowner does a $150,000 refinance with a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of 75 percent, they would pay $3,001. Included in those charges would be $412 for “title insurance”, $300 for Florida’s “intangibles” tax, and $525 for a “doc stamp fee.”
The identical $150,000 loan in lower-tax, lower-insurance fee jurisdictions such as North Carolina would cost just $1,207. In Michigan it would cost $1,447, still less a fraction of the cost of Florida–and in Illinois it would cost $1,533.
At the high-cost end of the scale, the same $150,000 refi would cost $2,944 in New York, $2,509 in Texas, $2,365 in Pennsylvania, and $2,199 in West Virginia.
How is it possible that the identical loan in one state could cost well over double to close as it does in another state? Primarily due to state government policies.
In states like New York, for example, title insurance rates are relatively high and the state imposes a “mortgage tax” on refinancings to which local counties can tack on their own surcharges. These fees are imposed even though no real property is actually changing hands.
The New York state tax is $.75 for the first $10,000 of loan value, and then between $.75 and $2.00 per $10,000 thereafter. As a consequence, a $150,000 refi generates a $2,975 charge in high-tax Kings County, but as little as $1,475 in lower-tax counties.
Title insurance rates, often set by state insurance commissions, vary widely state to state. On a $150,000 70 percent LTV mortgage in Texas, the title cost alone would come to $800. In North Carolina, by contrast, the same refi title expense would be just $150.
States use refi revenues as sort of a budgetary “cash cow,” yet residents are typically unaware of the large variations in transaction expenses from state to state.