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http://realestate.msn.com/Buying/Article_bankrate.aspx?cp-documentid=10658478&GT1=35000

North Carolina is the place to be for the lowest closing costs on your home loan. But no matter where you choose to reside, it’s likely there are hidden ‘junk’ fees you should demand be removed from the total.

New York, Texas, Florida. For the second straight year, those are the most expensive states in which to get a mortgage.

Nationwide, the average origination and title fees on a $200,000 mortgage this year totaled $3,118, according to Bankrate’s annual survey of closing costs. The fees in the survey don’t include taxes, insurance or prepaid items such as prorated interest or homeowner association dues.

Fees in New York City were highest, averaging $4,016 in Bankrate’s survey. Houston came in second, with fees that averaged $3,975. After that came Buffalo, N.Y., with fees averaging $3,845, and then Miami, at $3,683.

North Carolina had the least expensive closing costs in the survey, at an average of $2,650. The previous year, Indiana took the last spot.

The annual survey of online lenders is conducted by obtaining fee estimates for a $200,000 mortgage in each state’s most populous city. Bankrate also surveyed Springfield, Ill.; Buffalo; San Francisco; and Sacramento, Calif., just in case Chicago, New York and Los Angeles were unrepresentative. It turns out that it didn’t matter much. Cities in the same state weren’t far apart in total closing costs.

Why New York is tops
New York tops the list for the fourth year in a row for two reasons. First, origination fees are swollen by taxes that the state levies directly on lenders, which are passed along to consumers. Second, lawyers customarily conduct closings in New York. Many closings are attended by at least three attorneys (for the buyer, seller and lender). In some other states, especially in the West, closings are conducted by title agents and escrow officers who charge less than lawyers.

When comparison shopping for a loan, pay attention to the origination and title fees. In most places, those are the costs that are subject to negotiation. Taxes aren’t negotiable, and most prepaid costs, such as prorated interest, vary depending on the day of the month when you close the loan.

Study the good-faith estimate
Even as the housing market has slumped in the last three years, fees have gone up, says Mike Kratzer, president of FeeDisclosure.com, a Bankrate company, which provides consumers with information to help cut their mortgage transaction costs.

He says appraisal fees have crept up recently, as lenders ask appraisers to do more thorough, time-consuming work. During the housing boom, lenders favored appraisers who did the job quickly and inexpensively. Above all, lenders favored appraisers who justified house prices that, in retrospect, were too high.

State-by-state closing costs

Source

The Atlantic region is dealing with a steady—and scary—line-up of tropical storms. Hurricane Gustav struck last Monday with a weaker blow than anticipated, then came Hanna. Now, Ike is in effect and Josephine is on her way. So, how do the names for all these hurricanes get chosen?

G, H, I, J—well, alphabetical order is clear, but apparently there’s a little more to the selection process. Short and distinguishable names are used to identify storms, instead of the older method of identifying a storm by its latitude and longitude. Naming tropical storms allows for information about them to be easily distributed, especially when multiple storms occur at once.

Every region in the United States has its own naming procedure with a pre-approved set of names familiar to that area. The storm-prone Atlantic and Eastern North Pacific have the most elaborate naming procedures. According to the National Hurricane Center, both regions have their own set of six lists. The lists are used in rotation every six years, meaning the same list of names that was used to name Gustav and company will be used again in 2014.

Each of the six alphabetized lists includes 21 pre-approved names, with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z excluded. The name of a particular tropical storm indicates how many others have occurred that year. Our friend Gustav, thankfully tamer than his name might suggest, was the seventh storm to hit the Atlantic this year.

Other areas, like the Central and Western Pacific, use a strictly sequential selection method. Lists are not designated by year. If the third name on a list is the last storm to hit, then the first storm of the following year is named by simply picking the next on the list.

There are, of course, exceptions to the rules. When a hurricane’s impact becomes too severe, deadly or costly, its name is retired from the list. A new name with the same letter is then added to the list during one of the World Meteorological Organization’s annual meetings. Hurricane Katrina of 2005 was one such retiree. Others include: Hurricane Agnes (1972), Hurricane Betsy (1965) and Hurricane Andrew (1992).

The hurricane name game was an all-girls club for quite some time. In the late 19th century, Australian meteorologist Clement Wragge introduced the method of naming tropical storms after women. In 1953, after an international phonetic alphabet was introduced for naming storms, the practice of naming storms after women became common in America. The Atlantic region didn’t go co-ed until 1979. And now female and male names are listed alternately in alphabetical order.

In extreme conditions, the Greek alphabet is also an option for naming hurricanes in the Atlantic. As a back-up, storms take on names like Hurricane Alpha and Tropical Storm Beta when all 21 names from that year’s pre-approved list have already been used.

And while there have been several tropical storms in the Atlantic this season, here’s hoping that Ike is the last name we have to remember.

Robert Greenwald sent an interesting email today. exposing a bit more of mccain. the email reads as

The Real McCain 2 reached an astonishing 4 million views last week, just as the McCain campaign was trotting out lie after lie at the Republican National Convention. Coincidence? We don’t think so. To us, this unprecedented number suggests that the public is desperately seeking the truth about John McCain — a truth the corporate press still isn’t providing.

We’re hearing reports of a lot of hand-wringing from people who are scared and don’t know what to do. So we came up with a way to put that nervous energy to good use! Join the McCain Truth Squad and a couple of times a week we will send you McCain videos for you to forward on with a personal note to your friends, colleagues and family members.

Join the McCain Truth Squad: http://therealmccain.com/squad?utm_source=rgemail

To get you started, below are five videos that present the Real McCain: an elitist out of touch with hard-working Americans; a double talker who supports a costly war in Iraq but won’t support our veterans. Forward this email on. This is the McCain everyone should know.

1. The Real McCain 2: Watch as McCain’s YouTube problem became his nightmare in the video that received over 4 million views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

2. Less Jobs. More Wars: What is this ‘Iraq war’ charge on my bill?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh-T2iGkLJY

3. John McCain vs. John McCain: Tell McCain to get off the Double Talk Express.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI

4. McCain’s Spiritual Guide: The video that caused McCain to renounce Rev. Rod Parsley’s bigoted endorsement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXZbIGJrDkg

5. Why Won’t McCain Sign the GI Bill? Presenting the most blatant hypocrisy of the McCain campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK_9sI7hzAc

Imagine how differently people would regard McCain if they saw all five of these videos and learned the truth. That’s why we want you to forward this e-mail to everyone and anyone with a personal note at the top from you. Why send these videos individually when you can send them all at once? Also, get them on all the blogs and traditional news sites you can. Make sure you’re doing everything you can to educate the public about the Real McCain.

check out the videos.