Well, I can tell you that before we closed on our refi, we received a couple of Good Faith Estimates from the same lender as they kept changing reps on us (things were in turmoil at BoA...as usual). Yet, with all those GFE's, none of the fees ever changed numbers. But literally just as we were about to close, upon receiving our pre-closing documents, we saw our fees were suddenly much higher. Apparently, when we altered our loan from an FHA to a conventional loan, the rep failed to update some of the fees. I went online and found that they could not, by law, alter the amount of these particular fees from the Good Faith Estimate. Now some things...if I remember correctly...are flexible to some degree, but not the ones they'd tried to change -- I'm going to say it was the Origination Fee and a few others. I discovered all this by reading about RESPA (Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act) on the HUD website and elsewhere. It helped spell out what they could and couldn't do. Bottom line: there were some allowances (act of God, borrower has major change in finances, etc), but not many for altering amounts between GFE and closing. And "because my lender messed up" didn't seem to be one of them
I will say this -- when I brought it to the attention of our newest BOA rep, I didn't even have to pull RESPA out of my hat. She flat out said they would eat the fees as it was their mistake, and that they REALLY didn't want to draw anymore attention to themselves by the government *cough* .
If, after reading the RESPA info, you feel the lender is wrong, call them and read to them from the RESPA rules. And advise them you will report them if they don't straighten up and fly right.
