What happened to my monthly mortgage payment?
Your mortgage payment can change for a number of reasons. Check the statement for your mortgage, or call your servicer and ask them to explain.
Your monthly mortgage payment may have changed for more than one reason. Some examples include:
1、You have a mortgage with a variable interest rate (ARM), and the rate changed. Check to see what kind of loan you have. Some homeowners think they have a fixed-rate mortgage loan when, in fact, their loan has an adjustable-rate or some other feature that can change their interest rate and payment.
2、You have a loan where you only pay the interest or have the option to pay the principal. You can put off making payments on the principal for a while with these loans. That means that for a while, you’ll only be paying off the interest on the money you borrowed to pay for your home. At some point, you’ll have to start paying principal, or the actual amount you owe on the home, which will make your monthly payments go up.
3、You have an escrow account to pay your property taxes or homeowners insurance premiums, and your property taxes or homeowners insurance premiums went up. Check the monthly statement for your mortgage. If the amount you have to put into your escrow account is part of your monthly mortgage payment, your payment will also go up if your taxes or insurance go up. Find out more about payments held in escrow.
4、Either your interest rate or your escrow payments have gone down. Also, you might have stopped paying for private mortgage insurance. If you have private mortgage insurance and you can and do cancel it, your payments may change.
5、You had to pay new fees. Your monthly payment may have gone up because your servicer charged you extra fees. Check your monthly mortgage statement or any recent mail from your lender or servicer.
6、It’s also possible that the person who takes care of your mortgage just made a mistake. If you think your servicer made a mistake, you should call them to make sure. Tell the servicer what’s going on while you’re on the phone. Ask for a statement to be fixed. Also, ask for a reference number and the person’s name, and write down what you talked about and the date of the call so you can keep track. If your servicer can’t fix the problem over the phone, send them a notice of error explaining why you think your loan payment was calculated wrong. Make sure you send the notice to the address your servicer uses for errors and requests for information. This address should be on your statement or on the servicer’s website. It may be different from the address where you send your payments.
If you still don’t understand why your payment changed, you should call your mortgage servicer, and you might also want to send an information request.
