With interest rates plunging to 40-year lows last week, the home mortgage refi boom hit a record new peak: Four out of every five home loan applications nationwide were to refinance an existing mortgage rather than to purchase a home, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. But a new survey of refi transaction expenses--local mortgage transfer taxes, document stamps and title insurance fees--reveals that your out-of-pocket costs of refinancing depend heavily on the state you live in. Some states--such as Florida, New York, Texas, and Pennyslvania --impose much higher costs on mortgage refis than the rest of the country. For instance, on a typical $150,000 refi with a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of 70 percent, a homeowner in Florida would pay $3,001, according to a study by online mortgage originator, QuickenLoans.com. Included those charges would be $412 for title insurance, $300 for Florida’s “intangibles” tax, and $525 for a “doc stamp fee.” The identical $150,000 loan in lower-tax, lower-insurance fee jurisdictions such as North Carolina, by contrast, would cost just $1,207. In Michigan it would cost $1,447--still less than half the cost of Florida--and in Illinois it would cost $1,533. At the high-cost end of the scale, the same $150,000 refi would cost $2,944 in New York, $2,509 in Texas, $2,365 in Pennsylvania, and $2,199 in West Virginia. How is it possible that the identical loan in one state could cost well over double to close as it does in another state? Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman of QuickenLoans, says the two key reasons rest with state government policies. In states like New York, for instance, says Gilbert, title insurance rates are relatively high and the state imposes a “mortgage tax” on refinancings to which local counties can tack on their own surcharges. These fees are imposed even though no real property is actually changing hands. The New York state tax is $.75 for the first $10,000 of loan value, and then between $.75 and $2.00 per $10,000 thereafter, according to QuickenLoans. As a consequence, a $150,000 refi generates a $2,975 charge in high-tax Kings County, but as little as $1,475 in lower-tax counties. Title insurance rates, often set by state insurance commissions, vary widely state to state. On a $150,000 70 percent LTV mortgage in Texas, according to the Quicken study, the title cost alone would come to $800. In North Carolina, by contrast, the same refi title expense would be just $150. Gilbert, whose firm does business in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, says state-imposed fees “represent a very important cost barrier to refinancing for large numbers of American homeowners.” States use refi revenues as sort of a budgetary “cash cow,” yet residents are typically unaware of the large variations in transaction expenses from state to state. Could those high-tax states inadvertently be harming their local real estate economies by milking mortgage refinancers? Could there be side effects on sales and housing values? No statistical study has been conducted as yet, but it appears that most of the highest-appreciating home real estate markets over the past 5 to 10 years are not among the high taxers of transactions. For example, among the moderate to lower taxing jurisdictions are many of the higher-appreciating state markets, including Massachusetts, California, District of Columbia, Maryland and Rhode Island. On the other hand, some of the highest transfer-taxing jurisdictions are among the lowest-appreciating real estate markets, including West Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, Idaho, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina.