The down payment is the part of the purchase price funded from your own resources. This guide separates transaction and financing expenses without repeating the down-payment guide or promising a universal fee.
Split the budget into three parts
Record the down payment, expenses due before or at signing, and monthly or annual costs separately. Do not put one annual insurance premium and premiums for the entire loan term into the same total.
Notary and registration expenses
Request an itemised estimate for your transaction. Separate professional fees, applicable taxes and land-register operations. ANCPI publishes fees by operation; these do not represent all notarial expenses. Confirm who pays each item.
Property valuation
Ask which valuers the bank accepts, when payment is due and what happens if the loan is declined. The agreed purchase price is not necessarily the collateral value accepted by the bank. A difference can change the own funds required.
Insurance and recurring expenses
Request the terms for property policies and any life insurance associated with the offer separately. Record premiums, payment frequency and renewal conditions. ING’s example includes insurance and valuation costs; always check the actual offer.
What to check alongside APR
Read the included and excluded costs in your example. APR is not an invoice covering every expense of purchasing a home. Obtain a personalised offer and the notary’s estimate before deciding how much cash you need at signing.
Your cost worksheet
Use columns for expense, payee, confirmed amount, due date and whether another total already includes it. Leave unknown amounts blank and request written estimates. An unknown amount does not mean zero. Compare offers over the same period.
Moving an existing mortgage
Include new financing expenses and collateral-related operations. Article 41 of GEO 52/2016 prohibits early-repayment charges for contracts within its scope; Article 135 limits applicability to contracts already running when it entered into force. Check your contract’s legal regime and do not assume switching is free.
Next step
Use figures from the bank, notary and insurer. Separate initial and recurring costs before using a calculator. A lower monthly payment alone does not prove an overall saving.
Published cost is not automatically your cost
Check the product, offer date and conditions for charging or waiving the fee. Do not transfer a standard example’s tariff to a different programme. Ask whether applicable taxes are included and whether payment remains due if the transaction does not proceed.
Payment timing and refunds
Record the due date, payee and refund rule confirmed in writing beside every amount. A payment before approval might remain your expense if the purchase fails; clarify the particular case before authorising it. Do not treat a possible promotional reimbursement as money available at signing.
Compare like with like
Use the same loan amount, term and comparison period. Separate confirmed expenses from estimates. If insurance is already in the offer’s total repayment, do not add it again. For refinancing, also compare the debt remaining at the end of the period, not just the difference between monthly payments.
Cost references checked on 15 September 2026
This is not a personalised quotation. ING figures come from its public example; confirm the offer, conditions and any exemptions in the bank’s documents.
| Expense | Reference and scope | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Origination / assessment | 900 lei in the ING example; not a universal bank tariff | ING |
| Valuation | Up to 803 lei with an ING-listed valuer in the example checked | ING |
| Insurance | Individual premium; request property and life terms, frequency and conditions separately | ING |
| Notary | Individual quotation; no universal amount verified here | Quotation requested from notary |
| Mortgage registration | 100 lei/property + 0.1% of the secured claim; check the operation and tariff notes | ANCPI |
Two budgets: cash needed now and costs over time
Start with when each payment is due.
One budget shows the money you need before completing the purchase. The other follows financing costs over a comparable period, including expenses that recur.
The same payment can appear in both views without being counted twice in a combined total. Insurance paid before signing uses cash immediately, but may also be included in the borrowing costs presented by the bank. Mark that connection in your worksheet. Separate buying the property from borrowing the money: a property-related expense may remain payable even if you change lenders. A useful comparison identifies which costs differ between offers and which belong to the transaction regardless of the lender selected.
Keep the down payment in a separate column. Include it when checking available cash, but do not describe it as a bank fee or lost expense.
Requesting an itemised quotation
A single total cannot explain what you are paying for.
Ask each provider for the operation, calculation basis, amount, currency, included taxes, quotation date and circumstances that could change the price before completion.
Ask the notary to separate the components of the estimate and identify the recipient of each amount. At the bank, distinguish its own charges from money collected for other providers. Keep quoted ranges and the reasons for variation; do not automatically select the lowest number. When a fee is described as included, identify the total containing it. Similar labels in separate documents might describe the same operation or different services. Resolve that uncertainty before adding the amounts.
Record who confirmed the information. An undated verbal estimate without a precise service description should remain provisional until the responsible provider confirms its scope.
Valuation and the possibility of paying again
The agreed purchase price is not automatically the bank's accepted value.
Before ordering a valuation, confirm the lender's procedure, who may perform it, the documents required and when the resulting report can be used.
Ask what happens if you change the property, lender or completion date after the report is prepared. Do not assume that another lender will accept it unchanged, or that the fee will be refunded if the mortgage does not proceed. Separate the report's price from supporting documents needed to prepare it. If the valuation is below the figure used in your plans, the effect may concern your available cash as well as the valuation expense. Ask the lender to explain the consequences for your actual offer before promising additional money to the seller.
Keep payments already made and possible additional expenses on separate lines. A revised estimate does not erase the money you have already spent on the application.
Comparing insurance over the same period
Write down what the policy covers and who is insured.
For each policy, request the premium, payment frequency, coverage period and any mortgage conditions linked to it. Separate property insurance from cover for the borrower.
A monthly premium cannot be compared directly with an annual premium without converting both to the same period. Check whether the amount is fixed, depends on a changing calculation basis or can be revised on renewal. Do not multiply the first year's price across the entire mortgage term unless the documents justify that assumption. Where an interest discount depends on insurance, obtain both financing options in writing and compare their combined costs. The lowest premium alone does not explain the protection, exclusions or contractual responsibilities attached to the policy.
Label assumptions explicitly. A forecast for future premiums is a planning scenario, not a guaranteed price promised by the insurer for the entire loan term.
Current accounts and conditional discounts
A zero fee may depend on conditions continuing to be met.
If an offer includes an account or service package, ask about eligibility for free service, included transactions and charges when those conditions are no longer met.
Read the account fee, discount conditions and effect on the mortgage interest rate together. Do not count a service once as an account expense and again inside a package that already includes it. Conversely, a relevant transaction excluded from the package needs its own line. Request an explanation of what happens if salary payments stop arriving in the account or a condition changes during repayment.
Use one scenario where the conditions remain satisfied and another where they do not. Keep the lender's stated consequences separate from your own assumptions about future behaviour.
Payment dates and refundable amounts
A cost can be affordable overall but due too early.
Place each payment on a timeline: before application, during property checks, at signing and during repayment. Record the recipient and the document confirming payment.
For any amount paid before approval, ask whether it remains payable if the transaction stops and which document explains the refund conditions. Do not treat an anticipated refund as available cash before it is confirmed. A payment postponed until signing still belongs in the budget; it has not disappeared. If the seller, notary and bank give different dates, resolve the sequence before making commitments. Keep estimates separate from invoices and actual payments, so an updated quotation does not accidentally appear as a second expense for the same service.
This timeline complements the document checklist. A missing property document can change the appointment date even when the money for the planned fees is already available.
Avoiding double counting
Repaying principal and paying a fee are different movements of money.
Use separate columns for loan principal, interest, third-party expenses and bank fees. Add a reference where a document already includes one item in a larger total.
For example, a bank's total repayment figure may already contain charges shown separately elsewhere in the offer. Adding every visible number can therefore overstate the result. Equally, a cost outside that total should not be ignored merely because it is paid to someone other than the lender. Check the coverage of each figure before combining it. When comparing a shorter and a longer term, show both the monthly payment and the period being assessed. A lower instalment does not, by itself, establish a lower total borrowing cost.
If you cannot explain a line, leave it unresolved and ask its issuer. An explicit missing answer is more useful than a guessed amount hidden inside a total.
A worksheet for two competing offers
Use identical assumptions before comparing offer A with offer B.
Write the same property price, requested borrowing amount and comparison period at the top. List differences in conditions below those shared assumptions rather than concealing them.
For each offer, create sections for initial bank charges, third-party services and recurring costs. Next to each amount, record its source, date and whether it is confirmed or estimated. This is a method for organising quotations, not a fictional bank tariff. If one lender includes a service and another charges separately, explain that difference instead of forcing both into identical labels. Where terms change after an initial fixed-rate period, retain that boundary in the comparison and use clearly labelled scenarios for the period that follows.
Keep your working assumptions visible when using the mortgage calculator. Its result helps compare repayments; individual quotations establish the other costs payable.
Refinancing: new costs and the existing balance
Compare the remaining debt, not the original purchase price.
When moving a mortgage, request the current balance, closure procedure and costs of the new financing. Compare alternatives over a consistent remaining repayment period.
List the new valuation, property documentation, insurance and other applicable expenses separately. Ask whether an existing policy can continue under the new arrangement rather than assuming that it transfers automatically or must always be replaced. Distinguish fees for completing the new transaction from the amount used to repay the old lender. A longer new term can reduce the monthly payment while changing total interest substantially. The calculation therefore needs both an immediate cash budget and a comparison over the intended holding period, using assumptions appropriate to the actual offers.
The mortgage refinancing page covers this separate decision. Use it to organise the transfer without confusing refinancing costs with the expenses of buying another home.
Final budget check before committing
Every confirmed total should be traceable to its underlying documents.
Check the quotation date, payment recipient, due date, recurring frequency and conditions for each item. Mark unresolved costs and keep a separate reserve based on your circumstances.
Read the lender's personalised offer alongside the notarial estimate and the insurance quotations. If the documents use different amounts or assumptions, ask for clarification before signing. Keep copies of the versions on which you based the decision; later changes should be identifiable rather than silently replacing the original calculation. Its purpose is to make missing information visible and let you decide whether the transaction remains affordable when confirmed costs replace preliminary estimates.
Return to the mortgage comparison for available products. Compare their conditions only after establishing the same borrowing needs and distinguishing confirmed information from estimates.
Continue with your question
The down payment is separate from transaction expenses