A portion of the law allows dealers to charge consumers more for document fees.
They noticed that document fees were $150, she said, and bargained those down to $50. "We walked out at the price we agreed upon and nothing more," she said, at $26,577.
Wahl used a standardized Keogh plan from Fidelity, saving $2,500 in document fees.
However, health insurance rates have gone up and some new document fees are required, together increasing costs by about $500.
The selected journalists will receive competitively awarded grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which will provide up to $9,000 to pay the expenses of reporting a specific investigative story, covering costs such as travel, document fees, equipment rentals, and small stipends.
They go by a variety of names -- document preparation fee, underwriting analysis fee, tax escrow fee and escrow fund analysis fee.
But Katherine M. Porter, a professor at the University of Iowa, testified that mortgage companies and servicers had improperly sought payments without fully disclosing or documenting fees.
These proceedings generate considerable revenue for the firms involved: eviction and appraisal charges, late fees, title search costs, recording fees, certified mailing costs, document retrieval fees, and legal fees.
Done to reduce borrowers' monthly payments, serial refinancings allowed lenders to charge thousands of dollars in loan processing fees, including appraisals, credit checks, title searches and document preparation fees.
