With the new GFE and RESPA compliance laws taking effect recently there has a been somewhat of a push to allow not only Riverside, California home owners but also Riverside, California lenders, agents and other real estate professionals in Riverside, California to shop and compare settlement cost.

Closing.com bills itself as the largest online marketplace to shop and compare for settlement services. They offer pricing quotes on everything related to closing: title, escrow, appraisers, pest inspections, home warranty, surveys and more.

We found Closing.com the other day and we checked it out. Being a Riverside, California escrow company we only really viewed over the Riverside, California escrow services section. What Closing.com allows you to do is search for escrow services in your geographical area to find the best price.

The site gives you two options to join, kind of like Active Rain. One is the basic free membership. With this you pretty much can only post what services you offer and where, along with a phone number and email.

Or the other option is the premium membership. With this product you pay per county you want to market your service. For us, we would want to register for Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Los Angeles, San Diego and Ventura Counties. For that it would cost us right around $350.00 annually.

But with the premium membership we can upload a logo, get a better company description, we get ranked higher than competitors, and we get to post our closing fees if we choose too.

Shopping for real estate services in Riverside, California to get the best deal is not really a new idea. For probably close to 15 years now, home owners have been able to shop mortgage rates and companies on line with companies like LendingTree.com. But what is new, is shopping specifically for closing services.

What we were concerned with, after browsing many of our competitors pricing quotes, was the fact they seem to be low ball quotes.

Closing.com allows the Riverside, California escrow company to display a base fee. Some of these fees looked really good. But if you didn't pay enough attention to click on the details button you would realize that the fee you saw was not they would charge you for an escrow.

For instance, one our Riverside competitors has quoted $550.00 for a single family refinance with a loan amount of $150,000. This is what Closing.com calls the Standard Plan Coverage. But once you click the details button, you see the Optional Plan Coverage Charges:

In there was $100.00 for an E-Doc Fee, $200 Loan-Tie-In Fee, $50 Loan Pay Off Fee and more!

SO NOW THE $550 FEE YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING COULD END UP BEING $900 OR HIGHER!

Now, we are not sure if Closing.com will be able to fulfill its mission, to provide upfront pricing for closing services or not. But if we learned anything from Lending websites that quote fees and interest rates, it's that what is quoted is not always what you will get.

And with the new RESPA laws we just aren't sure if this is a good idea or deception waiting to happen.

Lenders should be extra careful, given that any with the new laws they are now responsible for all the fees quoted to borrower!