Have you received your 2014 assessed property value from the County's Appraisal District office for your area? Did you notice an increase in 2014 assessed value assigned to your property (compared to 2013)? Many homeowners will see an increase and may be please to know that property values are back on the rise after several years of nose diving values. But an increase in your assessed property value could also mean an increase in your total monthly mortgage.
If you have a mortgage which requires an escrow account, then you are paying a portion of your property taxes every month in your mortgage payment. The collections for 2014 property taxes are probably still based on 2013 assessed value. Your lender may not have access to the updated assessed value which was updated for the 2014 tax year. So if there is a difference in value of your property for 2014 property taxes versus 2013, you may be short on your monthly tax collections that are being currently being paid into the escrow account. When your lender gets the tax bill towards the end of 2014, the taxes owned will be based on 2014 assessed value of your property. If your lender has been collecting based on 2013 assessed value, and 2014 value is higher, then your escrow account will be short. If it's short, your lender will pay the difference and then contact you to pay them back. If you are unable to pay the difference, which they paid, in full then they can divide it by the amount of months needed to pay it back and that amount will be added to your mortgage payment. On top of that, the lender will need to adjust the monthly collections for your property taxes based on the new elevated property value. Once the adjustment is made, you will see another increase in your monthly mortgage payment.
To be proactive, I suggest you contact your lender and request an escrow analysis review. Provide the letter you received from your county's appraisal district which discloses your updated 2014 assessed value for your property. They can make the adjustment now to avoid a shortage in your escrow account when 2014 taxes are due.
To post a comment on this blog post, you must be an HAR Account subscriber, or a member of HAR. If you are an HAR Account subscriber or a member of HAR, please click here to sign in. If you would like to create an HAR Account account, please click here.
Erase note
You currently have no custom folders