"Recording a Mortgage in Kansas: What Does It Cost, and When Is the Fee Capped?"

Kansas charges a recording fee by the page, and the size of your loan has nothing to do with it. The register of deeds bills one amount for the first page of the mortgage and a smaller amount for every page after it. On a single family home you live in, where the debt the mortgage secures is small enough, K.S.A. 28-115(j) caps the whole recording fee, and that cap applies only when a mortgage cap affidavit is filed along with the mortgage.

I'm Jeff Moran, a mortgage broker in Bluffton, South Carolina, originating since 1996 and licensed in fifteen states, including Kansas, NMLS #483943, through C2 Financial Corporation. In Kansas, a one-page affidavit filed alongside the mortgage is what decides whether the recording fee on your closing statement stops at the statutory ceiling.

The reason it works this way is recent. For most of the last century Kansas taxed a recorded mortgage based on how much it secured, the way Georgia and Minnesota still do. That tax is gone now, the charge that replaced it runs on a completely different principle, and worksheets built before the change are still in circulation.

Why is there no mortgage registration tax on a Kansas closing?

Because the legislature repealed it. Kansas phased the mortgage registration tax down starting in 2015 and repealed the governing statutes effective January 1, 2019, under L. 2014, ch. 140, § 22. The Kansas Legislative Research Department's memorandum on the mortgage registration tax and statutory recording fees walks through the phase-down year by year, and through the recording fees the legislature raised to replace the revenue the tax used to bring in.

The Kansas mortgage page already covers the repeal and what it did to the cost of a Kansas refinance, and which states still tax a recorded mortgage puts Kansas among the states that do not. I would rather send you there than write it twice.

What this article is about is the part that came after. The fees the legislature raised are the fees you are paying now, and they behave differently from the tax they replaced. A tax measured by your loan amount got bigger as the loan got bigger. A fee charged by the page moves with the length of the document instead, so two clients borrowing very different amounts on the same set of forms can end up paying close to the same recording fee.

What does the register of deeds actually charge to record a mortgage?

One amount for the first page, a smaller amount for every page after that, and a couple of statutory surcharges that ride along with it. Those amounts are set in K.S.A. 28-115, and each county's register of deeds publishes the current schedule. The Kansas Register of Deeds Association keeps the fee information and the forms together in one place, and individual counties publish their own schedules. The number you want is the one for the county the property is in, rather than a figure somebody quoted from a different county or a different year.

The amounts themselves belong in the county's schedule rather than in an article. They are set by statute, the legislature has moved them before, and a dollar figure typed here would age while the county's own published schedule stays current.

Two things follow from a fee charged by the page.

Document length drives the number. A mortgage with a condominium rider, a planned unit development rider and a one-to-four family rider attached to it is a longer document than the same mortgage without them, and it costs more to record. Nothing about the loan itself changed.

The fee also belongs to the county rather than to the lender, who is passing it through to you. It shows up with the rest of the government charges on your Loan Estimate. Why a closing cost estimate changes between the first quote and the Closing Disclosure covers the ways that block of the page moves between the two documents. If you are holding quotes from two lenders, comparing two Loan Estimates line by line is where a recording fee that is wrong on one of them becomes visible.

When does the statutory cap apply, and who files the affidavit?

K.S.A. 28-115(j) puts a ceiling on the recording fee for one specific kind of mortgage. The statute reads:

"On and after January 1, 2015, the fee shall not exceed $125 for recording single family mortgages on principal residences imposed pursuant to this section where the principal debt or obligation secured by the mortgage is $75,000 or less."

There are three conditions in that sentence and all three have to be true at the same time. The property is a single family residence. It is the principal residence of the person granting the mortgage. And the principal debt the mortgage secures is $75,000 or less.

The third condition turns on the loan amount, and the value of the property does not enter into it. Somebody buying a home for well above that figure, with a down payment large enough that the mortgage itself lands under the ceiling, meets the test. So does an owner refinancing a small remaining balance on a home they have been paying down for a long time, since the statute measures the debt the new mortgage secures. If that is your situation, refinancing in Kansas covers what else changes on the cost side.

The ceiling applies only when the affidavit goes to the county with the mortgage. Registers of deeds across Kansas require a mortgage cap affidavit attached to it. The affidavit is a short sworn statement that the property is a single family home, that it is the principal residence, and that the secured debt is within the limit in subsection (j). The Register of Deeds Association publishes the form and counties publish their own versions of it. Without a completed affidavit in the package, the office charges the ordinary page-based fee, and the cap is claimed at the counter rather than reviewed and refunded afterward.

Counties that address it count the affidavit itself as a page when they figure the fee. On a document right at the edge of the ceiling, the form that claims the cap is part of the count.

What are the steps, in order?

1. The loan amount is where this starts, and the purchase price does not come into it. Subsection (j) is written around the principal debt the mortgage secures, so the question is whether the mortgage lands at or under the statutory figure once the down payment is applied.
2. The fee schedule that matters is the one published by the county the property is in. Kansas registers of deeds each post their own, and the association's fee page is the shortest route to whichever county you need.
3. If the loan looks like it lands under the ceiling, please ask the settlement agent whether the mortgage cap affidavit is going to the county with the mortgage. That question is cheap while the package is being assembled and it cannot be asked usefully afterward.
4. You will want to know which riders are going to be attached. A condominium, a planned unit development, a second home or a one-to-four family rider each add pages, and pages are what this fee is charged on.
5. The figure to work from is the one the settlement agent confirms for that county rather than a national average. The same is true of the rest of the Kansas-specific items on a closing statement, including special assessments that arrive on a Kansas tax statement, which are part of the escrowed payment instead of at the closing table.

A worked illustration

Numbers below are made up to show the mechanism. They are not any county's published schedule, and they are not a quote.

Assume a county that charges $20 to record the first page of a document and $16 for each page after it. Two clients close there on the same morning.

The first is buying, and borrowing well above the statutory figure. Their mortgage runs eighteen pages with a planned unit development rider attached:

First page                        $20
17 additional pages at $16       $272
────────────────────────────────────────
Recording fee                    $292

The second is refinancing a remaining balance that is under the ceiling on the home they live in. Their mortgage runs sixteen pages, and the one-page cap affidavit goes with it:

First page                        $20
16 additional pages at $16       $256
────────────────────────────────────────
Fee before the cap               $276
Statutory ceiling                $125
────────────────────────────────────────
Recorded at                      $125

Both mortgages were recorded in the same office on the same morning. The second one cost less because the loan was small, the home was that client's principal residence, and somebody put the affidavit in the package. If that affidavit had been left out, the second closing statement would have read $276 as well.

Four things worth checking while the numbers are still moving

A quote that still shows a Kansas mortgage registration tax. The tax has been gone since the start of 2019 and the line should not be there. When you see it, the corrected figure moves in your favor, so it is worth raising rather than ignoring.

A fee quoted from the wrong county. Kansas schedules are published county by county, so a number confirmed for one county does not tell you what another one charges.

A cap that qualified and was never claimed. This is the expensive one, and it is invisible after the fact. The mortgage records, the fee is charged, and nothing on the closing statement says the ceiling existed.

Riders nobody counted. A condominium purchase brings a rider with it, and the rider adds pages to the document the county is charging for. On a file where the uncapped fee comes close to the ceiling, the page count decides how much the cap actually saves.

What closing costs actually cover has the rest of the picture, and the recording fee is usually one of the smaller lines on it. It is also one of the few you can do something about before the documents are drawn.

Where to start

You can price your own Kansas scenario without a credit pull and without giving me your name. When you want the letter behind the numbers, what a Kansas pre-approval has to account for covers the rest of it. Choose the option that works best for you.

Common questions

Does Kansas still charge a mortgage registration tax?

No. The tax was phased down beginning in 2015 and the governing statutes were repealed effective January 1, 2019. A recorded mortgage in Kansas now carries the register of deeds' page-based recording fees, which are set in K.S.A. 28-115 and published county by county. A worksheet that still shows a Kansas mortgage registration tax is working from law that no longer applies, and correcting it moves the figure in the client's favor.

How is a Kansas mortgage recording fee calculated?

By the page. The register of deeds charges one amount for the first page of the document and a smaller amount for each page after it, plus statutory surcharges. The size of the loan does not enter the calculation, so a long document costs more to record than a short one even when the two loans are identical. Riders attached to the mortgage add pages, and pages are what the fee is built on.

What is a Kansas mortgage cap affidavit?

A short sworn statement attached to the mortgage at recording. It states that the property is a single family residence, that it is the principal residence of the person granting the mortgage, and that the principal debt the mortgage secures is within the limit set in K.S.A. 28-115(j). Kansas registers of deeds require it before they will hold the recording fee to the statutory ceiling, and the Kansas Register of Deeds Association publishes the form alongside the fee information.

What happens if the cap affidavit is left out of the package?

The office records the mortgage and charges the ordinary page-based fee. The ceiling in K.S.A. 28-115(j) is claimed at recording rather than applied automatically, so a file that qualified and arrived without the affidavit pays the full fee. Asking the settlement agent about it while the documents are being assembled is the cheapest version of this conversation.

Does the cap depend on the price of the home or on the size of the loan?

On the size of the loan. Subsection (j) is written around the principal debt the mortgage secures, so a home worth well above the threshold can still qualify when the down payment is large enough to bring the mortgage itself under it. A refinance of a small remaining balance on a long-held home is the other common shape, and both of them are ordinary Kansas files rather than unusual ones.

Who pays the recording fee on a Kansas closing?

It is a charge on the transaction and it appears in the government charges block on the Loan Estimate and again on the Closing Disclosure. Which side of the settlement statement it lands on comes from the purchase contract and local practice rather than from a statewide rule, which is also true of the owner's title policy in Kansas. The figure to work from is the one the settlement agent confirms for the county the property is in.