…mortgage. We got our first mortgage bill today and already we’re a little frustrated with Chase.
Reason #1
Micah has an account with Chase but I don’t. We got a letter from them today that looked like a credit card offer. I was just about to shred it when I realized that it was addressed to both of us. I decided to open it and it turns out it was our first mortgage bill. I guess we should have known that Chase was our mortgage lender (our bad) but I also think there should have been something on the envelope indicating it was from the Home Loans division. Or maybe something like this?
Reason #2
We knew that our monthly payments would include our property tax payment and home insurance. When we looked at the bill, it was $400 more than what we anticipated our actual mortgage payment (principle + interest) to be. We have the money for taxes and insurance budgeted but it wasn’t clear from the bill whether the escrow fee was the insurance, the taxes or both. It took 30 minutes to figure out what the payment includes.
Reason #3
We plan to pay more than the monthly payment. We have the money now and we’re better off paying off 5% interest than making 2% interest in the bank. We noticed on the bill that we had to specify how any extra payments were to be used and if we didn't, Chase would just hold the money and not apply it to anything until told to do so. This means we can’t use automatic pay from our account because there isn’t a notes field on the automatic payments page where we can enter where the money should be applied. We thought we could create an online account and pay directly that way but we ran into Reason #4.
Reason #4
I (Catherine) tried to create an online account but I kept getting error messages. It said an account already existed for the loan but that I didn’t have access to it. Chase attached the loan to Micah’s online account because he’s the primary on the loan. The funny thing is that I take care all the financial stuff for us and now I have to go through his personal login to sort out our house payments. There wasn’t any way online to create a new online login for our mortgage.
Reason #5
We got our statement today, May 11th and it says:
Statement Date : May 1, 2010
Payment Due Date: May 1, 2010
Um, anyone see anything wrong with that? I tried calling in to ask about it and customer service was closed at 6pm. Hmm.
So here we are. All I know is that this initial interaction with Chase and our mortgage statement has made us want to pay this as fast as possible.
We’re going to spend tonight going over our monthly budget. Sounds like fun right? But I guess there’s a silver lining, we owe money for a house we own.
Posts
8 comments:
I feel you on poorly labeled stuff from the bank, although I assume they don't want robbers to easily spot mail that has your personal info on it (like bank info) that's why they don't do it. Still... harumph.
My dad thought he was a GENIUS and decided that any mail metered and stamped "Pre-Sorted" meant that it was junk mail.
It turns out that a lot of stuff that gets sent by banks (real stuff, like credit card renewals) are sent "Pre-Sorted" so he'd been throwing out really important documents for like a year before he figured it out. Awesome.
@ Cathleya:
I get why they do it. I'm a little more peeved that I'm going to have to spend time on hold today with the bank trying to figure out why they though it was a good idea to make out first payment due the day print the statement up.
Also, my Dad would do the same thing as your Dad. He thinks if the address isn't handwritten, then it's junkmail. Actually, I take that back. He knows when there's a check inside the envelope. :)
Yup, taxes blow. Ours add about that much onto our mortgage as well. My BFF told me how much she pays for taxes on their rather large property and house and I wanted to kill myself. They pay $800.....a year. Redic.
@ xoxo, C:
$800? That's amazing!! I'm guessing ours is going to be at around $4300 for the year!! I think I paid $800 when all we had was empty, overgrown lot.
Wow, and I thought CitiMortgage was bad!
I completely feel you on reason #2 — our first mortgage bill too, was $400 above what we had been expecting and it increased by an additional $300 by the end of the year due to increased property taxes. Oh, and it sucks that there's always so much money sitting in escrow "just in case" the property taxes go up again. Oh the joys of home ownership!
It's so frustrating I know! Our account used to be Countrywide and it was bought up by Bank of America. Now we can't change our payments because you have to have a Bank of America bank account in order to change automatic payments? What is up with that?
Wait till you get a letter a few months or years in and they sold your mortgage to another lender. Apparantly they do that often. It's just another way they make money. Ours started out with one and then got sold to Citimortgage. My neighbor says hers has been sold 7 times in 9 years!!! I doubt there's much of that going on now that the banks are in trouble. who knows.
Yeah the mortgage statements was a realy eye opening. ALso, if you make an extra payment make sure you specifiy it's to go to the PRINCIPAL or they will automatically apply it to the interest! isn't taht nice of them?! We have citimortgage and they give us the option to pay biweekly. Our real estate agent also advised us to make 13 payments (intead of 12) per year.
Oh, how about the part where $,$$$ goes towards interest payments and only $$$ goes towards your principal?
Post a Comment