The title part is kinda weird. The government makes a best effort to ensure all lien holders are satisfied, but that can't be always guaranteed, so title insurance happens. They do the indepth research and put their money on the line (and charge a pretty penny for it). It's pretty rare, but there's little recourse if you buy a home from somebody and they weren't empowered to sell it to you. Banks obviously want to be protected from these situations since the loan is secured with the property. If the title company finds something suspicious, they won't insure it, which is why it's almost never a good idea to buy it for yourself too.
> Same with tax/insurance escrow
You can do this, but only for jumbo loans (>400k). Property tax and home insurance is usually paid once per year, and especially for first time home owners, not being prepared for one of these could be significant financial hardship. So the bank mandates an escrow to make sure a regular yearly charge isn't going to make you miss payments to make. They don't make money on this escrow and there's no interest or fees involved.
> On the other hand, here mortgages only have a closing fee (and quite often even none at all, with all the small fees being invisible and rolled into the margin), so that transparency is welcome.
Yeah, it's super nice. Spells out all the fees, the interest rate, the APR and everything. It clearly delineates fees that can be negotiated/shopped for and which are set by the government and which are set by the bank that you can't shop for (unless you change banks who might charge differently). It's also required to be provided to you in advance with a minimum time window to allow you to read, understand and come prepared.
