My mortgage has went up twice

[Brianna Johnson]

Hi there my mortgage has went up twice my escrow account had a shortage last year and now this year. What can I do so that my escrow account does not have a shortage? 

[Russell Brazil]

Assuming you are at 80% LTV or lower, you do not need to escrow funds and can pay your own taxes and insurance instead.

[Brianna Johnson]

I’m in SC do you know how I would go about paying my own taxes and insurance? 

[Bryan Martinez]

You can call them and ask them what the shortage is and just pay that upfront so there is no longer a shortage. If you do that, they can adjust your escrows back to normal. 

[Jay Hurst]

Quote from @Brianna Johnson:

Hi there my mortgage has went up twice my escrow account had a shortage last year and now this year. What can I do so that my escrow account does not have a shortage? 

 Your escrow is simply your property taxes and your home owners insurance. And both of those things go up. and up and up lately it seems. You just need to keep up with what those numbers are because you have access to that information when they go up. Pay attention to those notices. 

Then when you pay your mortgage every month to your mortgage servicer there is a field you can add extra every month for your escrow. that way the next year your escrow account will not have to double up to catch up. 

[Brianna Johnson]

How much would you put in the escrow account if you were me?

[Lynn McGeein]

@Brianna Johnson you’ll need to find out from your mortgage company how much extra you can pay into an escrow account because many have overage triggers where they’ll send it back to you if it goes over their limits. You should be getting an annual escrow review showing new tax and insurance charges and how that affects your payments, usually you can either send the difference as one payment or they raise your monthly payments to cover it. It usually changes every year. Ours went up drastically this year due to rising assessments causing much higher real estate taxes, and insurance went up over 10%.

[Mike Grudzien]

Quote from @Brianna Johnson:

How much would you put in the escrow account if you were me?

 Brianna,
There is not a generic amount.  It is all based on numbers: average tax increases, average insurance increases.  Talk to your mortgage company.
Mike