New Homes and the wacky escrow accounts that come with them
Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 9:25 pm
Who deals with this shit.
We were one of the thousands upon thousands of new homeowners who bought a new home a few years ago and were caught in the lending company's funny tax accounting trap which has caused a record number of foreclosures over the past year. Fortunately, we were able to adjust to the new monthly mortgage payment, however, after catching up on the taxes owed by us for the first year we owned the home, our escrow account has not been right ever since. The mortgage company has adjusted our escrow account 4 times over the past year by either increasing our mortgage payment a little, or writing us escrow refund checks because of overpayment of taxes.
In the midst of all this, our mortgage company wrote a check last year to pay for our insurance premium, but the insurance company applied the payment to someone else's mortgage. Instead of correcting the error and reversing the payment on the wrong mortgage and reapplying it to our policy, they simply dropped our coverage and cut us a check. What the fuck! So, we shopped around for a new insurance company for a couple of weeks and found one who was cheaper and gave better coverage. We paid them for our first premium and mailed a copy of the policy to our mortgage company to adjust the escrow accordingly and have all future payments made from the escrow account. The mortgage company did not pick up on all of this and applied forced insurance on us with a much higher premium which meant we were double insured over the last year and a half. Obviously, our escrow was readjusted to cover the higher premium making our mortgage payment increase.
After several phone calls back and forth between our insurance carrier and the mortgage company, we were getting nowhere. My wife finally walked into a mortgage office and laid everything out on the table and the mortgage company fixed everything. They cut a check for this year to our insurance company and the other insurance company refunded the money we were charged for the double insurance coverage back into the escrow account. Ah, the fucking escrow account. Now, mortgage company is trying to re-adjust our mortgage payment to a much lower payment because our premium is only a third of what the forced carrier was charging us and on top of that, there was a new tax analysis done on our property value and estimated taxes to be paid for '07. Now, they have written us a huge check and we're scared they may have written it for too much. It would be easier to take the option of just keeping the money in there, but I have a real problem of keeping extra money in an account that isn't earning interest. If there is extra dough lying around, I want it invested in a commercial non-publicly traded REIT or a VA; not a fucking escrow account. But thats just me.
This sucks.
We were one of the thousands upon thousands of new homeowners who bought a new home a few years ago and were caught in the lending company's funny tax accounting trap which has caused a record number of foreclosures over the past year. Fortunately, we were able to adjust to the new monthly mortgage payment, however, after catching up on the taxes owed by us for the first year we owned the home, our escrow account has not been right ever since. The mortgage company has adjusted our escrow account 4 times over the past year by either increasing our mortgage payment a little, or writing us escrow refund checks because of overpayment of taxes.
In the midst of all this, our mortgage company wrote a check last year to pay for our insurance premium, but the insurance company applied the payment to someone else's mortgage. Instead of correcting the error and reversing the payment on the wrong mortgage and reapplying it to our policy, they simply dropped our coverage and cut us a check. What the fuck! So, we shopped around for a new insurance company for a couple of weeks and found one who was cheaper and gave better coverage. We paid them for our first premium and mailed a copy of the policy to our mortgage company to adjust the escrow accordingly and have all future payments made from the escrow account. The mortgage company did not pick up on all of this and applied forced insurance on us with a much higher premium which meant we were double insured over the last year and a half. Obviously, our escrow was readjusted to cover the higher premium making our mortgage payment increase.
After several phone calls back and forth between our insurance carrier and the mortgage company, we were getting nowhere. My wife finally walked into a mortgage office and laid everything out on the table and the mortgage company fixed everything. They cut a check for this year to our insurance company and the other insurance company refunded the money we were charged for the double insurance coverage back into the escrow account. Ah, the fucking escrow account. Now, mortgage company is trying to re-adjust our mortgage payment to a much lower payment because our premium is only a third of what the forced carrier was charging us and on top of that, there was a new tax analysis done on our property value and estimated taxes to be paid for '07. Now, they have written us a huge check and we're scared they may have written it for too much. It would be easier to take the option of just keeping the money in there, but I have a real problem of keeping extra money in an account that isn't earning interest. If there is extra dough lying around, I want it invested in a commercial non-publicly traded REIT or a VA; not a fucking escrow account. But thats just me.
This sucks.
