Six inputs. One honest cash-to-close range.
Optional — sharpens the estimate
What you get
- A cash-to-close range for your county and price
- Every line marked fixed / lender-controlled / prepaid
- Your seller-assist cap by loan type
- A month-13 escrow forecast from calibrated Pocono tax data
- An LE comparison with "ask about this" flags
Who it's for: First-time and relocating buyers in Monroe, Pike, Carbon, and the Lehigh Valley — especially if you're budgeting with a calculator built for another state.
Walk away with: A number, a colored worksheet, and the three lines to push on.
What this does not do
- It is not a Loan Estimate. A Loan Estimate comes from a lender after an application, on a federal form. This page is an educational estimate built from the numbers you typed and from public Pennsylvania and Monroe County data.
- It does not quote a rate. The rate field is yours to fill in. If you leave it blank, the prepaid-interest line simply says so.
- It does not price your title work. Pennsylvania title premiums are rate-regulated, but the schedule here is a seed table pending review, and endorsements, settlement fees, and deed prep vary by agent. Your title agent's figure governs.
- It does not know your assessment. Property-tax figures are estimates from an effective-rate model calibrated on local sales; your assessment may differ. Look up the parcel before you rely on the number.
- It says nothing about whether the loan can be made. Credit, income, assets, and the property all sit outside this page. Nothing here is an approval or a commitment to lend.
Straight answers
Why is Pennsylvania's transfer tax so high?
Pennsylvania charges 1% at the state level and most municipalities and school districts add another 1% between them, so 2% of the purchase price changes hands at settlement. Who pays it is not set by law — the customary practice across Monroe, Pike, and Carbon is a 50/50 split, so this tool assumes you pay 1%. It is negotiable in the agreement of sale, and on a 2% total that single line is worth more than most of the lender fees combined.
Which of these lines can I actually negotiate?
Three groups behave differently. The fixed group — transfer tax, recording, title premium — is set by Pennsylvania law, the county, or a filed rate schedule, so your lender cannot move it (the transfer-tax split is the exception, and you negotiate that with the seller, not the lender). The lender-controlled group — origination, points, underwriting, processing, admin — is priced by whoever is doing the loan, which is exactly why it is shown here as a range rather than a number. The prepaid group is neither: it is your own money going into your own escrow account, so it is not a fee at all, though the amount depends on when in the tax year you close.
What is the month-13 escrow shock?
Your escrow account gets funded at closing based on whatever tax figure the lender had — often the seller's current bill. About a year later the servicer runs an escrow analysis against the bills that actually arrived. If your tax bill is bigger than the one the escrow was built on, two things happen at once: the account has to catch up on last year's shortage, and next year's target goes up. Both land in the same monthly payment, which is why the increase can look startling. Enter the seller's current bill above and this tool will show you the size of it before you ever get the letter.
My Loan Estimate is bigger than what my loan officer said. Is that normal?
Cash to close is not the same thing as closing costs, and neither is the same thing as your down payment — a lot of the gap between an early conversation and a Loan Estimate is prepaids and escrow, which are your money rather than anyone's fee. The useful move is not to guess: compare the LE line by line against the ranges here, and ask your lender to explain any line that moved or that you don't recognize. That is a fair question and a good lender answers it in plain language.
How much seller assist can I ask for?
Each program caps it. Conventional allows 3% of the price when you put less than 10% down, 6% between 10% and 25%, and 9% above that. FHA allows 6%, USDA 6%, and VA limits seller concessions to 4%. Two things people miss: assist can only pay closing costs and prepaids, never your down payment, and asking for more than the cap does not get you more — the excess is simply cut at settlement. This tool clamps to the cap and tells you when it did.