My mortgage company made an error in calculating my property taxes last year?

Question

Travis County, Texas appraised my home last year for $186,000 (I only paid $156,000.) When I bought my house, I told the mortgage company to make sure to fix my escrow payments so that I wouldn't be short. Well, they calculated it incorrectly because they didn't realize we had a MUD. We were short by $3K. Now they have raised our monthly escrow payment by $300.00 to cover the shortfall and another $200.00 to cover the "anticipated" tax increase. Well, for some unknown reason, the county only appraised our house at $158,000 and I filed for a homestead exemption; so my taxes will not be as high as last year. My family cannot afford this $500.00/month increase to our payment; what can I do to convince our mortgage company to lower this new payment. If I can't get it lowered, I will be forced to sell my first home. In today's market, it doesn't look like it will be easy and I don't want to foreclose.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Call your local tax office and ask for a statement of what your tax will be this year. Then take that to the mortgage company - should help. Good luck.

As far as the part to make up last year's shortage, you're stuck with that. But if they'd calculated it to cover the full amount, you'd have already paid it, so you're not really paying anything extra, just paying it later than you would have. The mortgage company doesn't know how the county will assess a house, so the first year is often off.

Answer 2

You should have a "cushion" amount for your escrow account. Once you have that much built up they refund it to you. That should hold you over until you can get the payments fixed.