Financing · United States

Cash to Close Calculator

What you actually wire on closing day — down payment, costs and prepaids, less what you have already paid.

The short answer

Cash to close is your down payment, plus closing costs, plus prepaids and escrow reserves, less your earnest money and any seller credit. The part most estimates get wrong: prepaids are not a cost. They are your own tax and insurance collected early, and folding them into a "closing costs" figure can nearly double it.

Your figures

Down payment: —
Loan amount: —
Closing costs—: —
Prepaids & reservesYour own money, held early: —
Credits: —

Cash to close—

What you wire on the day. Your lender confirms the final figure on the Closing Disclosure three days before.

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Send these figures to your lender or your agent and check them against the Loan Estimate.

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This is an estimate

Lender fees, title customs and transfer taxes vary by lender, loan program and county, and escrow reserves depend on your closing date. The authoritative figure is the Closing Disclosure your lender must give you three business days before closing. Use this to plan and to sanity-check that document — never to wire against. Nothing here is financial or legal advice.

The detail

Half of it is not a cost at all

Ask what it costs to buy a home and you will be told a percentage — two to five percent of the price, depending who is talking. That figure is quoted so freely that almost nobody asks what is inside it, and what is inside it is two very different kinds of money.

Lender fees, title work, recording and transfer tax are costs. You pay them to complete the transaction and you never see them again. Prepaid interest, the first year of insurance and the tax reserves your servicer collects are not costs. They are your own money, moved forward in time — the tax bill was coming anyway, and the escrow account holds the funds on your behalf until it arrives.

The practical consequence is that two lenders quoting the same "closing costs" can be quoting genuinely different things, and the cheaper-looking one is sometimes just the one that put more of your own money in a different column. The calculator above keeps the two apart for exactly that reason, and the percentage it shows counts only the first kind.

Three worked examples

What buyers actually wire, in dollars

Three purchases, run through the same arithmetic as the Tool above. Prepaids sit in their own column on purpose — they are your money, collected early and held for your tax and insurance bills, and counting them as a cost is what makes closing-cost estimates look twice as bad as they are.

Scenario	Down payment	Closing costs	Prepaids	Credits	Cash to close
Conventional, 20% down$450,000 price, 20% down, 1% lender fees	$90,000	$8,350	$4,500	−$5,000	$97,850
Low down payment, seller helping$380,000 price, 5% down, $7,500 in seller credits	$19,000	$8,713	$4,200	−$11,500	$20,413
Higher price, 10% down$700,000 price, 10% down, 1% lender fees	$70,000	$13,000	$6,800	−$10,000	$79,800

Credits are the earnest money you already paid plus anything the seller agreed to cover — both reduce the wire, neither reduces the cost. Down payment is far and away the largest lever: it moves the number more than every fee on the page combined. Your own figures belong in the calculator above; see how we calculate this.

Line by line

What makes up the number

What is cash to close?

Cash to close is the single figure you wire or bring to the closing table. It is your down payment, plus your closing costs, plus prepaids and escrow reserves, less the earnest money you already handed over and less any credit the seller agreed to. It is not the same as closing costs, and it is not the same as your down payment — it is everything, netted.

Are prepaids part of your closing costs?

No, and treating them as though they are is the most common way a cash-to-close estimate misleads people. Prepaids are your own property tax and homeowner’s insurance, collected early and held in an escrow account on your behalf. That money buys something you would owe whether you closed or not. Closing costs — lender fees, title work, recording, transfer tax — are the price of transacting, and they are gone. Both have to be brought on the day, which is why they get added together, but only one of them is a cost.

How much are closing costs for a buyer?

Commonly quoted as 2–5% of the purchase price, and that range is doing a lot of work. It swings on the loan type, on your lender’s fee structure, and above all on your county — a buyer in a state with no transfer tax and a seller-paid owner’s title policy is at the bottom of it, and a buyer in a high-transfer-tax metro can be above it. Worse, many published figures quietly fold prepaids in, which inflates the number. The percentage shown by the calculator above deliberately excludes them.

Does earnest money count toward closing costs?

It counts toward the total you owe, as a credit. Earnest money is not an extra expense on top of everything else — you paid it when your offer was accepted, it has been sitting in escrow, and at closing it is applied against what you owe. If your contract deposit was $5,000, your cash to close is $5,000 lower than it would otherwise be. It is money already spent, not money still to spend.

How do seller credits change what you bring?

A seller credit reduces your cash to close dollar for dollar, which is why buyers frequently prefer one to an equivalent cut in the price: a price reduction saves a small amount each month, while a credit saves thousands on the day, and cash on the day is usually the binding constraint. Loan programs cap how much a seller may contribute, and the cap varies with the loan type and your down payment. A credit above the cap is simply disallowed rather than partially applied.

When do you find out the real number?

Your lender must deliver a Closing Disclosure at least three business days before closing, and that document carries the figure that matters. Before it, the Loan Estimate gives you a good approximation, and some of its line items are legally restricted in how far they may move between the two. Anything you calculate here — including with this tool — is for planning and for checking that the lender’s number looks sane, not for wiring against.

Also asked

Common questions about cash to close

Can you roll closing costs into the loan?

On a purchase, mostly not. Unlike a refinance, where costs are commonly financed into the new balance, a purchase loan is sized against the price rather than the price plus your fees. The usual routes to reducing cash on the day are a seller credit, a lender credit in exchange for a higher rate, or a smaller down payment — each of which trades cash now for cost later. A lender credit in particular is worth doing the arithmetic on rather than accepting: it is a rate increase for the life of the loan.

Why did my cash to close go up just before closing?

Usually prepaids rather than fees. Escrow reserves are calculated from your actual closing date and the timing of the next tax bill, so a date that slips by two weeks can move the number noticeably. Prepaid interest works the same way — you pay from the closing date to the end of that month, so closing on the 2nd costs far more in prepaid interest than closing on the 29th. Neither is a fee going up; it is the calendar.

How do you actually pay it?

By wire transfer in almost every case, or a cashier’s check where the closing agent still accepts one. Personal checks are not taken for anything substantial. Confirm the wire instructions by calling your closing agent on a number you looked up independently — never one from an email — because wire fraud in real estate closings is common, well organized, and effectively irreversible once the money has gone.

Does cash to close include the down payment?

Yes. Cash to close is the whole wire: your down payment, plus closing costs, plus prepaids and escrow reserves, less your earnest money and any seller credits. The down payment is usually the largest part of it by a wide margin. This trips people up because "closing costs" is quoted separately and sounds like the whole bill — it is not, and a buyer who has budgeted only for closing costs is short by the down payment on the morning of closing.

Source: CFPB, Closing Disclosure explainer

Is cash to close the same as closing costs?

No, and the gap is large. Closing costs are one component. Cash to close also includes your down payment, which is usually several times bigger than everything else combined, and prepaids, and it subtracts your credits. A buyer told their "closing costs are $9,000" who budgets $9,000 for the day will be short by the entire down payment.

Closing costs, escrow and title insurance, defined →

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