Admittedly I am not good with finances. I have improved vastly since my just-graduated-from-high-school-and-carry-15-different-
credit-cards-all-with-balances days but I'm still nowhere near where my husband would like me to be. I care but not enough to take the time to do all the things you're supposed to do, like create and use a budget and make fiscally smart decisions. So it is a true testament to the luck in my life that I came across the latest scheme from our mortgage company.
The folks that carry our mortgage called me toward the beginning of the year with news that we weren't depositing enough money into our escrow account each month to cover the property taxes. (The escrow account is a part of our mortgage loan.) The woman presented me with two options: pay the estimated amount in one lump sum or spread the payments out over the rest of the year. I chose the latter. Fast forward several months to the point where I receive and review our latest statement. I notice our escrow balance has grown to an astounding $4400+. We know that our taxes fall somewhere in the $3300 range so we've already overpaid by a thousand bucks. Wtf?! I decide to give our mortgage company a call to stop the monthly amount from being taken out of our mortgage payment as we clearly have enough to pay our property taxes.
I tend to think of myself as a relatively intelligent individual but this lady apparently thought I was the largest dumbass on the planet. That has to be the explanation or how else could she tell me what the mortgage company was doing and expect me to go along? Here's the breakdown.
The mortgage company performs some sort of assessment at the beginning of the year. The outcome of this is that they are given a figure, an estimate if you will, of the expected property taxes. They then call the homeowners and explain they need more than the figure that is a result of their assessment. Do I need to type that slower? They want you to overpay. "But we send you the money back at the end of the year." She was incredulous that I wouldn't take part in this glorious game plan I like to call "Rip off your customers".
That's not the end of the trickery. They also want to continue to take the $500 out of each mortgage payment we send in to build up our escrow balance because "you didn't want to make the lump sum payment". Were we to continue in this fashion, we would end up overpaying our property taxes by approximately $3000, which we'd get back -- she assured me of this many times. The problem, Barbara, (I have no idea if that is her real name but let's use it anyway) is that I don't want to overpay my taxes to such an extent. I don't want to pay a fee to stop the payments to the escrow account. I want that money to come back to me so I can pay my own damn taxes and use that money for something useful like, oh I don't know, paying down the damn mortgage loan balance so you get less money in interest. You fat cow.
After being told this could not be done without great expense to us, I contacted our broker and let it fly -- but in a nice way because we like him. Everything was swiftly resolved in our favor. No fees were assessed. They returned the money in the escrow account to us. Darr and I agree to take care of the property taxes on our own. All is right in the world.
Score:
Evil Mortgage Company 0
Us 1
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