We had a comment on a recent internal audit about whether services listed as shoppable are truly shoppable, specifically the E-recording fee, to make sure they are listed correctly on the LE. And I agree, it is confusing because if the Bank closes the loan, it is not shoppable as we have a service we use, but if the loan closes at an attorney's office or title company, quite often they have their own eRecording service that they use so in a sense, it is shoppable as it depends on the firm. So we have argued circles here about whether the eRecording fee should be listed as a shoppable service under the different firms (along with settlement agent and title services) because if the loan is closed at the Bank, then the eRecording is not truly shoppable.

Personally, I would like to list it as a non-shoppable service because if the Bank the closes the loan, they have no choice and also if they go through an attorney/title service, they have no choice either because it is going to be whatever the firm uses, but it would be listed differently on the LE making it look shoppable.

The only other choice I see is creating a new 'Services You Can Shop For' list for when the loan will be closed at the Bank or if it will be closed elsewhere and if it is closed elsewhere, listing the eRecording fee as a service under the provider. We operate in four different markets so we already have four different services lists, this will just double the number of lists and would be one more complication we need to be careful of, making sure the right list gets sent. Which is why I am not a fan of this solution, but if this is the way we have to go, then so be it.

Just fyi - it is generally only purchase transactions that close elsewhere so we would have a fairly good idea of which list to send, but there still may be times it would close at the Bank and not at the firm.

Has anyone else run into this? And if so, what was your solution?

Sounds to me if you are closing in-house it is non-shoppable and if you are closing through an agent, it is shoppable, as you do not control who they use or what they charge for it.

You just have to decide where the loan is going to close at the time the LE is issued. Closing purchase money transactions in-house must be a pain with the IRS reporting requirements.

I understand what you're saying but this isn't how the can/cannot shop paradigm is intended. If it is a fee that the borrower cannot shop for, that means it's the bank that prevents the borrower from shopping. Even if a title company has their own vendor for the e-recording, the borrower can still shop because they can always choose whichever title company they want to perform the closing.

I don't have experiences with loans where the bank performs the closing. When the title company performs closing, I have always seen the e-recording fee placed in the same section as all other title fees. Seems to me the solution to your problem is to determine, up-front, which loans will close at the bank and which loans will close with an attorney/title company. If it closes with the bank, the fee populates in B and you should remove the E-recording from the provider's list, because the bank is selecting the vendor and will not allow for shopping. If it closes with a title company/attorney, the fee shows in C and populates on the provider's list with all other title fees.