Annual Percentage Rate (APR), Amount Financed, Finance Charge, and Total Payments…the Truth In Lending Disclosure Statement is one of the most challenging disclosure forms to explain to borrowers at a Massachusetts real estate closing. I like to call it the “Confusion In Lending” Statement because the form is what happens when the government attempts to recalculate your interest rate and closing costs in a way most human beings would not even consider.
To explain the Truth In Lending Disclosure, we’ll use a dummy form for a $500,000 purchase transaction with a $400,000 loan (20% down payment), a 30 year fixed rate loan at 5.00% at a cost of 1 point.
Annual Percentage Rate
The confusion begins. The Annual Percentage Rate, or APR, as you can see is not 5.00%, which is the contract interest rate for the loan. Why? Because the APR does not use the loan amount for its calculations but rather the “Amount Financed.”
Amount Financed
And the confusion continues. The Amount Financed is not the $400,000 loan amount, but is about $6,600 less than the loan amount. That is because the Amount Financed equals the loan amount ($400,000) less prepaid loan and closing fees and payments. Fees included in the amount financed are: points, lender fees such as underwriting, process, tax service, mortgage insurance, escrow company fees, prepaid interest to end of closing month, and Homeowners Association fees. All of these fees are added up and subtracted from the loan amount to reach the Amount Financed figure. Note that depending on when the loan closes in the month, and fees from third parties such as escrow companies the Amount Financed will vary and therefore so will APR.
How The APR Is Calculated
Now that we have the Amount Financed, we can calculate the APR. For a 30 year fixed loan such as this, the true loan amount is amortized for the loan period using the interest rate. In our example $400,000 amortized for 30 years at 5.00% has a payment of $2,147.29 per month paying principal and interest.
To calculate the APR, we use the same payment –$2147.29 every month for 30 years– to pay off an Amount Financed of $393,372.22 (loan amount less costs) to reach an APR of 5.141%. So the APR is higher than the interest rate because the Amount Financed is lower than the loan amount for the same monthly payment and term.
ARMs–Adjustable Rate Mortgages
If you are taking out an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM), you may as well just throw the Truth in Lending Disclosure out the window. The TIL is allowed to be based on the introductory interest rate through the entire life of the loan. Your adjustable rate mortgage, however, will reset its interest rate after 3, 5, 7, or 10 years depending on the type of product. There’s no way to predict where interest rates will be in the future, so the Truth in Lending Disclosure is inherently inaccurate for ARMs.
Explaining the Truth in Lending Disclosure is one of the many functions of a Massachusetts real estate closing attorney. In other states which aren’t required to use closing attorneys, they will not explain these complicated forms to you.
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Richard D. Vetstein, Esq. is an experienced Massachusetts Real Estate Closing Attorney. For further information you can contact him at [email protected].
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