Flood insurance

What are escrows & WHY did my mortgage go up?

by John Rice

Welcome to homeownership.

If you are new to this, there is a day coming in your future that happens to everybody who owns their home.

You will be having a perfectly ordinary day. Your life will be going swell. You’ve been excited because the value of your home is going up according to the zestimate, which you frequently check.

Then you go to the mailbox or check your email. You’ve got something from your lender. It’s called an escrow analysis and has a bunch of numbers all over the place. It is almost as confusing as your cell phone bill and all those stupid docs you signed when you bought your house. You have no idea what it all means. All you know is that it says your mortgage payment is going up starting in a couple of months.

There goes that perfectly ordinary day you were having.

Can they do this to you? Yes they can. Here is why and how it all works:

In case you didn’t know, the escrow account is for money you give the mortgage company within your monthly payment to budget for the property taxes and homeowner’s insurance. When those annual bills come due, the mortgage company pays them on your behalf.

Here are the reasons why your mortgage payment may increase due to escrow accounts:

1. The assessed value of the house increased. This is when the PVA looks at houses that have sold around your house and thinks the value of your house has gone up. It’s a good news/bad news thing when this happens. It means your net-worth just went up but also means you’ve gotta pay more in taxes when they increase the assessed value. You will get a letter from the PVA when/if this happens. They have the right to do so annually and there is an appeal process.

2. The tax rate increased. The amount of taxes you pay is a simple math problem. It is your assessed value multiplied by the tax rate. If your assessed value did not change but the tax rate went up…..well, you’re paying more in taxes.

3. Your homeowners insurance went up. (This is happening all over due to the crazy storms we have had.)

4. There was a shortage of funds in the escrow accounts to pay the taxes and homeowner’s insurance. 

The mortgage company collects this money over the course of the year so they have enough in the escrow accounts to pay the property taxes and homeowners insurance on your behalf. If the projected expenses for next year exceed what you are currently paying into those accounts, they can raise the amount you pay into escrow every month to make sure they have enough to pay those bills when they come due. Should you have one year when there is an excess amount left over, the amount you pay for escrow accounts could go down, making your mortgage payment less.

5. And the last reason is sometimes it can be a combination of any of the above reasons.

I sure hope this helps make sense of something that is not at all fun to deal with!

Why is this the dullest blog post ever?

by John Rice

This is probably going to be the dullest blog post I’ve ever made in a decade of blogging.

Flood insurance.

Seeing all the news about the hurricane and flood insurance has it on my mind I guess.

It is a boring topic but there are some important things to know about it.

In Lexington, we don’t really get flooding.  Our basements sometimes fill up with water when we have two feet of rain in a short period.  Some intersections might have a foot of water in them.  People who back up to a creek might have their backyard under water.  That is about the worst.  We don’t have a river in a heavily populated area.  We are too far from the ocean.  It isn’t a wide spread problem here.

But we still have several houses that require flood insurance.  These are mainly ones that back to a creek.  In the past 12+ years as a realtor, I am guessing I see about 1 in 20 houses where the seller has checked on the Disclosure that the house is in a flood plain and requires flood insurance.

Almost always, I suggest that my buyers don’t even look at the house.  Why?  Most people don’t understand what flood insurance is, how it works or what it means.  When people don’t know how much, if any, water to expect and they don’t know what it will cost, most buyers move on.  It scares them, and when you are scared, you normally retreat.  So, being in a flood plain and requiring flood insurance is a stigma for most buyers.

There are two exceptions where I can feel good about rubber stamping my approval on purchasing in a flood plain:

  1.  When the house is in a higher price range.  An extra $100 a month to a buyer in the sub $150k price range is a big deal.  The buyer considering a $500k house isn’t as worried about the extra $100 a month or whatever the insurance will cost.  To them, it is just a fee to have the nice view that often comes with backing to a creek or pond.
  2. When the lot is just soooooo worth it.  I sold relatives of mine a house in a flood plain.  It is never fun to pay for it and occasionally deal with a creek that just can’t stay within it’s banks…..but any other time they have a huge, wonderful backyard that backs to a picturesque creek.  It is so beautiful back there that we were all silent when we first saw it.