Also, be adamant and stick to your guns with a refusal to pay fees for early payoff of the loan.
I’ve heard countless stories of this being slipped into the contract at closing and pressure being put onto the buyer to sign it.
Unless you’re taking a subprime loan or a few types of ARM’s, there’s no real reason to do a prepayment penalty. On subprime loans, and some ARMs it makes a big enough difference to the interest rate to be worth considering, and weighing the pros and cons.
But for fixed-rate conventional A-paper and FHA, if someone IS trying to get you a prepay penalty, find out why and what the alternative is...usually it’s not something you have to do.