My lender count the deal differently than my broker and the gap was $6,200 at closing

Most people find out at the table, which is exactly why that $6,200 story is so familiar. What I do now, before I've locked anything or agreed to a date, is ask both sides to produce a fee worksheet itemized to the line and then I email them to each other explicitly and ask them to confirm they're looking at the same numbers. Not a phone call. An email, so there's something to point at later.

The per diem thing is the one that bites people the most and it's almost always because closing date slipped and nobody recalculated. On my duplex refinance last fall I pushed closing to the first of the month specifically to kill the per diem exposure and the lender saved me about $800 just from that timing shift. Worth asking about on the Henrico deal depending on when you're targeting.

What I'd actually want to know before committing to that bungalow though: is your broker doing in-house processing or brokering to a wholesale lender? Because if it's the latter, there's a third set of hands on the numbers and reconciliation gets harder, not easier.

What happened to you is common and has a name: the gap between the loan estimate and the closing disclosure. The loan estimate (LE) is the standardized form a lender must give you within three business days of application. The closing disclosure (CD) is the final version, due to you at least three business days before closing. Comparing those two documents line by line is the reconciliation moment you are looking for.

The per diem issue you ran into is one of the trickier line items. Per diem interest is the daily interest charged from closing day through the end of that month. It shifts every time your closing date moves, so a two-week slip can add real money. On a $200,000 loan at 7%, that is roughly $38 per day. Ten days of drift is $380 you did not plan for.

Here is what I would do differently for the Henrico deal. When you get the loan estimate, ask your broker to show you exactly how the origination fee is calculated and whether it is a flat fee or a percentage of the loan. Then ask the lender the same question in writing. You want both answers referring to the same loan amount and the same closing date. If the answers look different, that is the moment to resolve it, not at the table.

When the closing disclosure arrives, give yourself the full three days to read it against the loan estimate. The CFPB publishes a free side-by-side guide showing which fees can change and by how much. That is worth pulling up.

One thing worth confirming with a real estate attorney in Virginia: whether any of your closing costs fall under protections that limit how much certain fees can increase from LE to CD. A local attorney can answer that in about ten minutes.

What loan type are you using for this bungalow, conventional or something else?