Our friendly unaffiliated title company let us know today that as of 1/1/2018 - all Texas guaranty fees are done and any new closings will be assessed a Guaranty Assessment Recoupment Charge. Going up from $3.00 per side to $4.50.

I'm going to treat this as a fee that was disclosed and then not used and then a fee that was not disclosed that the bank will have to eat. (For our title services that would have been shopped and our our list.)

Just wanted to give a heads up and see if that's how you'd treat it too.

This was announced in November and loans scheduled to close in 2018 should have had the new fee on the LE. I agree with your approach. At least it is in the 10% bucket and most likely will not cause any tolerance violations. You will not have to actually eat it in most cases.

http://www.tdi.texas.gov/orders/documents/20175297.pdf

Glad to know someone in the financial docs industry knew this was happening. Too many hats too few of us are wearing over here and it slipped by us. Yes that's its title services, but we've been "negged" in the past for the difference between settlement or closing fee to the title company in the past - so with the name change on the fee we're going to treat it as a title fee not disclosed. A title fee to a provider on your shopping list is a 0 tolerance item, if I remember correctly. I'm saying negged, only because I can't remember if it was an audit comment or a verbal from an examiner (or maybe both).

It would only be a 0% tolerance, if you don't allow them to shop. If you allow them to shop and they pick your provider, then it would going into the aggregate 10% bucket along with the recording fees.