Bankrate.com conducted this year's mortgage fee study by obtaining six to nine good faith estimates in each state from the Web sites of online lenders. (Hawaii, where only four online lenders were found, was the exception.)

Researchers picked a ZIP code in the biggest city in each state, then requested a breakdown of fees for a $200,000 mortgage in that ZIP code. In each case, researchers requested fees for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan for a borrower with excellent credit to buy and occupy a single-family house, with a down payment of at least 20 percent.

Closing costs can be divided into three categories.

Closing costs: • Origination fees charged by the lender. • Title and settlement fees charged by third parties. • Taxes and prepaid items such as homeowners insurance, association fees and prorated interest.

Bankrate's survey includes lenders' origination fees and title and settlement fees, and not taxes or prepaid items. The survey was conducted in June.

By selecting the biggest city in each state, Bankrate sought information for loans in some of the nation's most expensive places, including New York City, Los Angeles, Honolulu and Miami. Presumably, not a lot of home buyers get $200,000 mortgages in those cities, but it's not inconceivable because some buyers make big down payments -- and by setting the same loan amount nationwide, the study allows for fair comparisons.

By selecting the most populous city in each state, Bankrate made a couple of decisions that could be argued with.

• New York City is incomparable. Because the Big Apple is unique, last year's closing costs study used the state's second city, Buffalo, instead. This time, Bankrate used New York City again, as it had done in 2004 and 2005.
• California is big in all senses of the word, and it can be divided into two regions: north, bridged by the San Francisco Bay Area, and south, starring Los Angeles.

Bankrate surveyed closing costs in both cities. To prevent confusion, the rankings list only Los Angeles, which comes in 17th. But San Francisco has higher closing costs, and if that city were included in the rankings, Northern California would land in the fifth spot, with total origination and title fees averaging $3,101 ($1,326 in lender's origination costs and $1,775 in title and other third-party fees).