Oh boy. Just found out our mortgage went up $120

there was a weird Hazard Insurance charge on there that has never been on there before. :confused3
Are you paying your home owners policy or is the bank? If you are make sure they have a copy & that you stay current. Hazzard insurance protects the mortgage company in case something happens to the house. It is normally added if there is a laps in your homeowners policy. I had this issue last year, because somehow when my mortgage was sold the policy details didn't get the new bank. Once the details got straighted out they removed the hazzard policy.
 
Well, be sure to contact the bank to talk about what can change due to your job loss. We have friends who dealt with two job losses at nearly the same time. The bank was the first place they contacted, and although they did get a few months behind, they were never in immediate danger of losing their mortgage b/c they were in constant contact. Finally the friend got a job (not sure if his wife did), and now they are making strides towards getting current.

We're keeping Netflix because we need some entertainment and it's only $10 a month.

If by any possible chance you're an Amazon Prime member...they are now including free movie downloads (rentals) in the membership. I believe it's $75 for a year, so if you have a computer that can hook up to a TV, or if you don't mind watching on the computer, it would end up being cheaper annually, if you can afford it up front.
 
Wow, $120 a month is huge for insurance. I pay about $475/year.

Did they recently send letters asking if you have insurance? They may have done that and then if you did not respond, set up their own ins at a premium cost.



Ours is $1800/year. It all depends on what your home would cost to rebuild and how your personal belongings are valued. Location is important too.
 
I'm sorry this happened. $150 a month is a manageable number, but sometimes it seems like all the bad things that can happen do- and happen in one year!

When I read this, I thought about the thread about people not having enough in their 401ks. How can we save enough for retirement when our houses are losing value, but our taxes and insurance go up? How can we save enough when we lose a job? How can we save enough when our kids college costs more than my first house?

If I think about it too much, I will get depressed, so I won't. But OP, you have my sympathy. Sometimes in our lives, $150 is nothing , and sometimes it is everything. Things will get better.
 

If possible can you check around with other insurers? When Allstate dropped us they wanted to put us in their subsidiary company which would have cost us almost $1k more than what we were paying :scared1:. We found another company with much better coverage for way less. Also, keep an eye on your taxes. Although you can't really do anything about them but pay them :headache:, at least when you'll know when an increase is coming.
 
"Hazard Insurance" is home owners insurance, ie fire, flood, wind damage and so on. Do you have a separate policy that you pay on your own? Most mortgage companies make you pay your Hazard Insurance via escrow. Almost all require you to have it one way or another. If you are paying it on your own outside of your mortgage, make sure your policy is paid and active and get ahold of your mortgage company as they may have added a second policy thinking your was not being paid or for some other reason. Either way call the mortgage company and find out…

Is hazard insurance different from homeowner's insurance? We've always paid it in escrow, lumped in with the mortgage payment, but it's never said, "hazard insurance" before.
 
Wow, $120 a month is huge for insurance. I pay about $475/year.

Did they recently send letters asking if you have insurance? They may have done that and then if you did not respond, set up their own ins at a premium cost.

I think the hazard insurace said $880, or 8 something, anyway. I guess the rest of the raise is because of taxes going up?
 
Were the flood maps for your area redrawn by any chance? We got hit with that a year or two back. Nothing about the property changed, but one year we weren't part of the floodplain and didn't need flood insurance, and the next we were and we did. That was an uncomfortable jump, since flood insurance is almost as much as our general homeowners policy and we're paying it for a home in an area that hasn't flooded in the history of the town.

That could be it. It would be highly annoying, though, because we live on a hill in the neighborhood and we made sure the (can't remember what it's called) slope-thingy away from the house was correct before we closed.
 
We'll call the bank today.

One more question - if my insurance is paid in escrow with my mortgage each month, can I look around and change it if I find something cheaper? And if I do, will the insurance company work with my bank or how does that work?
 
Absolutely. My long time home insurer decided to increase my policy by 15 percent one year and then followed with a 20 percent increase. I said no way and shopped around and found a policy through AAA for 1/2 the amount. As I recall, AAA took care of informing my insurance company, and I ended up getting a refund from my insurer because my escrow account had too much money in it as a result of the decrease.
 
We'll call the bank today.

One more question - if my insurance is paid in escrow with my mortgage each month, can I look around and change it if I find something cheaper? And if I do, will the insurance company work with my bank or how does that work?

Yes you can always change insurance companies. When you find a new company with a lower rate you call the old company tell them the date you want to cancel, then call the new company with a date to start the insurance. Your current insurance company will send you a refund check then you send that to the mortgage company. Your escrow will be negative for a little bit if it's not time to renew your insurance but it will even out and you could possibly get an escrow refund close to Christmas.
 
ours went up $160....stupid taxes.... since we've lived here (6 years) it has gone up every year...this year was the highest it's ever gone up though :(
 
And I thought we were struggling yesterday. :guilty:

We'll manage somehow. I really don't want to get rid of the internet, especially since I'm looking for a job. Already got rid of cable and our YMCA membership. We're keeping Netflix because we need some entertainment and it's only $10 a month.

I don't think there's anything else to get rid of.

Oh well, chin up. I'm not going to slip back into feeling sorry for myself.

It will be okay. However, saying things like we "need" entertainment and it's "only" $10 a month can get you into even more trouble. People don't need entertainment, they need food and shelter. And, every $10 can add up. You can get free books/movies at the library, play card games and/or board games. Just think, every $30 you can cut is one less dollar a day. Good luck!
 
I hope that you figure out a way to lower the amount. We've been lucky with our mortgage going up very little or not at all...so far.
 
I was kinda upset that ours went up $35/month, but I guess I shouldn't complain. Our Homeowners went up dramatically and our taxes only a little bit, because the tax assessment was higher.

I may just shop around for a better deal on our homeowners, we just switched our auto insurance and are saving $600/year.

Suzanne
 
Escrow accounts often require that your account always have a minimum balance that includes a cushion amount over what you owe (varies, but rule of thumb is a minimum balance of about 2 months worth of monthly escrow payments). So if any month that year ever dips below that minimum (say, for instance, the month your annual taxes are paid), then they will increase your escrow payment for the following year to refill your account to not go below the minimum.

For a good description, here's an older DIS thread where it gets explained:
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1219366

In short, it's a little insane. In our case, they would examine our escrow balances the month before that year's property appraisal/valuation would be released. So they always based our projected next year's cost, and ultimately our monthly required escrow payment, at last year's tax payment. If our valuation or taxes ended up being less than they'd projected for that year, then we'd end up getting a PAYMENT from our escrow account, and our mortgage payment lowered...which tended to make it a short-fall the following year! And so it was usually a year or two of an escrow payment and monthly decrease, followed by a year of a big mortgage increase. So inefficient. I learned to never spend that escrow payment on anything, but put it into savings for the inevitable increase.

And anytime I know someone who is buying a house for the first time, I make sure they are aware that this occurs. It's one of those things that catches a lot of first time homebuyers off guard.

Which is why when we refi'd we did away with escrow all together. I know escrow is a good idea if you're someone who simply can't refrain from spending the money you're supposed to save for annual taxes, but it's not a problem for us. AND we earn interest on it instead of the mortgage company.

One thing I am surprised after reading this thread is how caught-off-guard some are when their mortgage payment has gone up due to tax or insurance increases. Haven't you been getting mail about your valuations, taxes from your county, and insurance increase info from your insurance providers? Even under escrow, we always get a letter from our county appraisal office to let us know what our taxes will cost at the end of the year, and at least a month's notice from our insurance company about renewal increases. We always knew very far in advanced it was coming before it hit escrow. I don't know how it would take a mortgage payment increase to inform someone of these changes? Not challenging anyone, just not understanding if it's different in other areas?
 
Look into the head of household discount for your property tax. In NM we have it but never applied for it. We applied for it but it won't take effect until next year. We also had to do a "tax lightening" law suit against the county since our property taxes increase 150% in 2 years (our neighbors all saw only a 4% yearly increase- a judge found it unfair)! We just had our taxes lowered due to the law suit (it was for people who bought their homes between 2005 and 2010 here).

Call your home owners too. Maybe you can have it looked at and readjusted.

I feel your pain. It's so hard when you're trying and trying and everything is going up. The new increase in gas prices is going to throw the nation back into a bigger problem.:sad2:
 
One thing I am surprised after reading this thread is how caught-off-guard some are when their mortgage payment has gone up due to tax or insurance increases. Haven't you been getting mail about your valuations, taxes from your county, and insurance increase info from your insurance providers? Even under escrow, we always get a letter from our county appraisal office to let us know what our taxes will cost at the end of the year, and at least a month's notice from our insurance company about renewal increases. We always knew very far in advanced it was coming before it hit escrow. I don't know how it would take a mortgage payment increase to inform someone of these changes? Not challenging anyone, just not understanding if it's different in other areas?

When I get this letter regarding taxes, it does not explain how the new valuation will affect my taxes. It just says that I will now be taxed on $X amount.
 
Look into the head of household discount for your property tax. In NM we have it but never applied for it. We applied for it but it won't take effect until next year. We also had to do a "tax lightening" law suit against the county since our property taxes increase 150% in 2 years (our neighbors all saw only a 4% yearly increase- a judge found it unfair)! We just had our taxes lowered due to the law suit (it was for people who bought their homes between 2005 and 2010 here).

Call your home owners too. Maybe you can have it looked at and readjusted.

I feel your pain. It's so hard when you're trying and trying and everything is going up. The new increase in gas prices is going to throw the nation back into a bigger problem.:sad2:


We signed up for the Homestead Expemption, as soon as we possibly could, in fact, I think we filled out the papers and had to wait until the next tax season for it to go into effect. But, then again taxes here in AL are a drop in the bucket compared to other states, in fact it is even less then our homeowners policy.

Suzanne
 













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