Straight answers to the questions that come up while you're buying a house, or living with the loan on one — and, where the honest answer is it depends, what it depends on.

Most mortgage explainers are written to be found rather than read. You can tell by the shape: the answer arrives late, hedged into uselessness, and then a form appears.

These are written the other way round. Each page takes one question people actually ask, answers it in the opening line, and spends the rest earning that answer. Where the truth is that it depends — and for a lot of these questions it does — the page names what it depends on and tells you how to find out which way yours falls. That last part is the whole difference. It depends is where every other library stops.

They're written by the lender who'd do the loan, which shows up in what they're willing to refuse. I'm licensed in Idaho, so where a page goes further for that one state, it says so. Everything else here is national, and nothing gets stated as a general rule because it happens to be true somewhere.

Closing costs

The money you have to produce at the table that isn't your down payment — and the part where a figure lifted from a national page is most likely to be wrong for you specifically.

Who pays closing costs is the place to start. Both sides pay; which lines land where is decided locally and then negotiated. The page pulls apart the three forces doing the deciding — statute, local custom, and your contract — so you can tell which one is running your transaction, and it's blunt about the fact that only the first of them is written down anywhere.

Can you roll closing costs into the loan is three questions wearing one sentence, which is why two people can answer it opposite ways and both be narrowly right. The page pulls them apart. On a purchase the honest answer is almost never — the loan is sized against the house, what it appraises for and what you agreed to pay, and your bill at the table sits outside that measurement entirely. On a refinance, yes, and the page is straight about what that does to what you owe afterwards. The other two things people mean by rolling it in aren't borrowing at all: a lender credit leaves your balance where it was and raises the price of the money instead, and a seller concession is the other side paying out of their proceeds, which makes it a term in your contract rather than something a lender grants. How much of it your programme will let a seller cover is capped, the caps differ by programme, and the page says outright that the version of the VA one repeated almost everywhere is wrong in the direction that costs a veteran money.

Are closing costs tax deductible is the one that gets asked months later, with a return half-finished and the closing paperwork back out on the table. It leads with the thing the tax pages bury: deductions of this kind only count if you itemize, most filers take the standard deduction instead, and if you're one of them the honest answer is that none of it reaches your return at all. Whether any particular line does anything for you is your preparer's call, and the page hands it back rather than pretending otherwise — what it can do, because I'm the one who produced the document, is tell you which line on your Closing Disclosure is which. Two of those get misread constantly: the escrow deposit isn't a payment of your property taxes, it's money moving into an account somebody pays them out of later, and the points line isn't the origination fee sitting in the block beside it.

Being written now: what closing costs actually consist of.

Earnest money and the contract

The deposit is the first real money to leave your account, it leaves early, and the question of whether you get it back arrives at the worst possible moment.

Is earnest money refundable answers it honestly: sometimes, and nothing about the money itself decides it — your contract does. This is also the cluster where I'm most careful about what I'm not. What your agreement entitles you to belongs to the attorney or agent on your contract, and a page that tells you otherwise is doing you harm. What a lender can tell you is the other half, which happens to be the half that most often puts a deposit in question: where your file actually sits, what an approval does and doesn't mean, and what tends to go wrong late.

Credit and qualifying

What went wrong before you got here doesn't sit on your file as a verdict — it sits there as a clock, and every programme runs its own to its own rules. Where a clock like that stops is always written down, in documents meant for underwriters rather than for the person counting the days.

Buying a house after a bankruptcy puts the waiting periods at the top, before asking you anything, and then spends the rest of the page on the half nobody else prints. A waiting period has a start and an end, and the pages repeating the famous figures only ever name the start. Each programme sets its own end and they don't agree: at closing, when a case number is pulled, when the file reaches the agency, when the money moves, the day you apply. Those are different days, sometimes by weeks, and the costly direction is the one where somebody measures to the wrong end of the ruler, decides they're not ready yet and stops asking. It is straight, too, about which of the shortest routes open only where a person reads the file rather than a scoring system — a rule you can read and a road you can take are not the same thing. What your case entitles you to belongs to the attorney who has it, and the date you're hoping for isn't ours to hand over either: the page refuses it by name. What a lender can tell you is which day each programme is counting to, and that's the half that decides whether you're actually still waiting.

VA loans

A VA loan runs on rules of its own, and they're federal — identical in every state, with local custom getting no vote in any of them. Which is why so much of what gets repeated about them is out of date: rules that never vary get written up once, copied, and then left alone when they change — in more than one case, on VA's own site.

The VA funding fee chart puts the chart at the top, before asking you for anything, and then spends the rest of the page on what a chart can't show you. The higher rate the Guard and the Reserve are supposed to pay was abolished years ago and is still being quoted at them, including on VA's own site. The down-payment band that decides which row you're in is measured against the purchase price rather than against the loan — a small distinction that moves people into the wrong row, and the wrong row is the cheaper-looking one. And the exemption that gets missed most often belongs to veterans who would be entitled to disability compensation but are drawing retirement or active-duty pay instead, and who therefore assume it isn't theirs. Whether a rating claim of yours is likely to be awarded or backdated is a question for VA, and the page hands it back rather than guessing.

The VA appraisal fee schedule is the one where the out-of-date document is still being published as the current one. VA replaced its regional fee schedules with a single national table; the retired ones are still on the page, under a heading that calls them current, and the table actually in force sits below them under a heading that claims nothing at all. A lender working from the file VA labels current authorises, in some counties, less than the fee that county is allowed — no appraiser on VA's panel takes the assignment at that number, and the order sits unfilled until somebody works out why nobody has picked it up. All a borrower ever sees of that is an appraisal that's late and nobody able to say when it's coming. The page also settles the question the funding fee chart raises and can't answer on its own: the funding fee can go into the loan, the appraisal fee on a purchase can't, and it's the same regulation saying both.

Title and the loan underneath it

The deed says who owns the house and the note says who owes the money — separate documents, signed minutes apart, that then go to different places and live different lives. Moving one of them doesn't reach the other, and the paperwork that moves it isn't obliged to mention what it leaves behind.

How to remove a name from a deed answers that, and then keeps going into the half most pages on the subject leave out. Taking someone off title moves ownership and nothing else: the person removed still owes the whole debt, the loan keeps reporting on their credit, and an underwriter counts that payment against them the next time they borrow — which is what most often stops the person who left buying again, and it arrives months later, in an approval that comes back smaller than anyone expected. Only a payoff or a lender's release changes it, and each turns on whether whoever keeps the house can carry the payment alone — except where a programme will process an assumption without a credit review. The page is straight about the fear that sends people here as well: the due-on-sale clause is real, and federal law puts it out of a lender's reach for most of the transfers these readers are actually making — which protects the transfer and says nothing whatsoever about the debt. Which deed, whose signature, what a decree obliges: those go back to the attorney on your file, with the reason.

Can you sell a house in probate takes the same split into the situation where the borrower has died, and finds the loan missing from the answer all over again. Selling is what gets explained; whether the house has to be sold at all is what doesn't. Federal law puts the due-on-sale clause out of a lender's reach on a transfer by descent or to a relative who occupies, the servicing rules give whoever inherits standing to be dealt with before anybody is on the note, and the programmes go further in different directions — one of them will not require an assumption at all, another will process one without a credit review. The page also takes on the one claim about this that is repeated and wrong, which is that a reverse mortgage has to be paid off in full. Whether the court has to approve, who signs, and what anybody is personally on the hook for: those belong to the attorney on the estate, and the page says so by name.

Who gets the house in a divorce begins by saying whose question that is — a court's, or the agreement's — and then answers the half those pages leave out: what the loan does whichever way the house goes. A decree can award a house. It cannot award a mortgage, and the note keeps every name on it until it is paid off or a lender lets a name go in writing. So the page follows the loan down each road: sold, where the payoff settles it; kept, where a refinance is usually also the buyout, and an assumption frees the other person on some programmes, never on USDA, and on FHA in a divorce without the credit question being asked again; and left, where the departing borrower carries a payment on a house they no longer own into their next approval — and where every programme has a written rule for a debt a court has assigned, and none of them asks for the payment history people assume it will. Who gets the house, what the equity split should be, what to do if the other party won't sign: those go back to the attorney on your case, and the page says so first.

Liens and the closing table

A lien is a debt that follows the house instead of the person who owes it. It sits on the title until it is paid, released or put in line behind a new loan, and a sale or a refinance closes over it only once one of those has happened — which makes it a closing question before it is a legal one.

Can you sell a house with a lien on it answers yes with the conditions attached, and then does the part the ranking pages leave as a footnote: it follows the lien to the closing table. Whatever put it there — a tax bill, a judgment, an unpaid contractor, an association's dues — the title company treats it the same way, as a requirement that has to clear before the deed can move, and in the ordinary case it clears out of the sale proceeds on the day, with the release recorded afterward and the rest reaching the seller. The page is straight about where that stops working: a lien bigger than the equity, a release nobody can produce in time, a claim the seller disputes, or a buyer's lender that will not fund over any of those. Whether the lien is valid, whether it can be fought, and whether the person holding it will take less: those go back to the attorney on your file, and the page says so by name.

Can you refinance with a lien on your home takes the same claim to the other transaction, and finds the ranking pages answering a different question — what a lien is — while the searcher's is what the new loan does about it. The page puts the decision where it sits: the title company rules on whether it will insure the new loan around the claim, and the lender's condition is that policy, so the lender's answer waits on the insurer's. Then it follows the ways the claim clears — paid out of the new loan, which costs equity and has to fit the programme's ceiling; put in line behind it, which a lienholder can agree to and the title company can accept; or insured over, with money held back, which is the insurer's call about its own risk — and what underwriting conditions the approval on in the meantime. Whether the lien is valid, whether it can be fought, and whether whoever holds it will take less or stand behind the new loan: those go back to the attorney on your file, and the page says so by name.

Not written yet

Named here because they're the next clusters and because a library that hides its gaps is telling you something about itself: how USDA loans actually work, what an appraisal is on any loan and why an inspection isn't the same thing, and what a lender is reading on your file when nothing has gone wrong.

What every page here does

Answers the question before asking anything of you. Skips the figure it can't source, and says out loud that it's skipping it, rather than borrowing a plausible-sounding one from somebody else's market — and where the figures are solid, prints them in full, at the top, before asking you anything. Hands back the questions that belong to your attorney, your agent or your closer, with the reason. Nothing here is a prediction, and nothing here is in a hurry.

Ask me the one that isn't written yet

If your question isn't here, send it. Tell me where you are in the process and what you're trying to work out, and I'll answer it directly — no credit pull, no application, nothing to sign to get an answer. The good questions tend to become pages.