Escrow Removal Fee?
"Assume they do not overwithhold. You pay in $500/mo, and every time it hits $3000, they pay the tax. Engineers call this a sawtooth function, it looks like this.  The average balance is not $3000, but close to $1500. The very simple math is $1500 * rate * years.  It looks like your equation except it's not 58, it's just the years. And the question is whether you can make more than $850 on $1500 average before you sell. I wouldn't be so quick to plug in 29 years, as the average home ownership is 7 years, and depending, who knows if a refinance is in your future?  The bottom line - How long would it take you to get a 57% return (2350/1500)? Ironically, the most responsible (and risk averse) person would say ""decades. Banks offer less than 1%."" even an 8% market return, while not guaranteed, is close to 7 years. But, if you carry 18% credit card debt, you can pay it down a bit each month and let it float back up every 6 months. Less than 4 years to break even." Consider that the bank of course makes money on the money in your escrow. It is nothing but a free loan you give the bank, and the official reasons why they want it are mostly BS - they want your free loan, nothing else. As a consequence, to let you out of it, they want the money they now cannot make on your money upfront, in form of a 'fee'. That explains the amount; it is right their expected loss by letting you out. Unfortunately, knowing this doesn't change your options. Either way, you will have to pay that money; either as a one-time fee, or as a continuing loss of interest. As others mentioned, you cannot calculate with 29 years, as chances are the mortgage will end earlier - by refinancing or sale. Then you are back to square one with another mandatory escrow; so paying the fee is probably not a good idea. If you are an interesting borrower for other banks, you might be able to refinance with no escrow; you can always try to negotiate this and make it a part of the contract. If they want your business, they might agree to that.
First, you are reading that document correctly, but it's not 78% of original mortgage. It is actually 78% of original home value.  For example, if the home was valued at $100K when you bought it and you received a $90K loan, PMI must be removed when you owe $78K, not 78% of $90K. To make matters worse for the bank, they missed the required timing to drop PMI. I would print the document you referenced, cite the applicable portion, and tell them if they do not comply, you will report them for failure to comply. For example,  I'm sure I am not the only one in this situation, and the FDIC will be   eager to assess the huge fines they can collect from a bank that isn't   operating within the law. Something like that. FYI - I'm not a lawyer I would not try to reverse the transfer.  You need to create a paper trail as to what happened to this money and why.  Be sure to document whatever you do. Reach out again Reach out to the company again and see if you can transfer the money back to their account.  A wire transfer is $20 (usually), be sure to negotiate the company covering this, and every other fee. If you cannot reach them You could probably move the money to an escrow account at your new bank.  The new bank will likely be able to advise you on the best way do this.  You should probably also send a letter via certified mail (to ensure they received it) informing them you've done this and how to get in touch with you. By putting the money in an escrow account, you've proven that you haven't used it, and if the company wants it back its very obvious who's money it is.  Sending the certified mail (someone must sign for it), will also create a paper trail that will help you if things get ugly. Finally don't spend it I don't think you should have to cancel your card.  Call your customer service line and just indicate to them what has happened.  You aren't getting service for what they are charging you and they are refusing to remove it themselves. "My gym has a habit of randomly increasing our monthly payment with a $20 ""Special Fee"" a couple times a year.   This charge was not initiated until after I signed up, and signed authorization for a set monthly fee. The agreement I signed included no wording of this fee, so I have not given them permission to charge me this fee. I also have received no type of notification of this fee prior to it being charged to my credit card on file.   This seems very illegal to me. Am I right? What course of action might I have to get this stopped?" i prepaid roughly $400 at closing into escrow. that's my minimum allowable balance. paid in all year, and now taxes and insurance are paid in december. after december, they're projecting a $200 balance, which is $200 too low. homeowners insurance hasn't changed, pmi hasn't changed, property taxes are virtually identical to estimate at closing. the difference is that the $400 initial payment didn't factor in timing of those payments out of escrow. pretty lame if you ask me. I've done this, but on the other side.  I purchased a commercial property from someone I had a previous relationship with.  A traditional bank wouldn't loan me the money, but the owner was willing to finance it.  All of the payments went through a professional escrow company.  In our case it was a company called Westar, but I'm sure there are plenty out here. They basically serve as the middle-man, for a fee (something like $5 a payment, plus something to set it up).  They have the terms of the loan, and keep track of balances, can handle extra principle payments and what that does to the term of the loan, etc.   You want to have a typical mortgage note that is recorded with the local clerk's office.  If you look around, you should be able to find a real estate lawyer who can set all this up for you.  It will cost you a bit up front, but it is worth it to do this right. As far as taxes, my understanding is that the property itself is taxed the same as any other property transfer.  You would owe taxes on the difference between the value of the property when you inherited it and when you sold it.  The interest you get from the loan would be taxed as regular income.  The escrow company should send you tax forms every year listing the amount of interest that you received.  There are also deductions you can take for expenses in the process. "I simply wrote my bank an email and said, ""I want to handle my own escrow"".  They said, ""fine"" and even let me set up a third account called ""escrow"" (savings and checking being the other two)  that I just transfer money into whenever I want.  But, I don't actually know what their requirements are for doing that. I have a ton of equity in the house, and I never missed a payment, AND I have direct deposit at that institution.  So, it can be done." The money NEVER becomes your money. It has been paid to you in error. Your best response is to write to the company who has paid you in error and tell them that for the responsibilty and subsequent stress caused to you by them putting you in a position of looking after their money you hereby give notice that you are charging them $50 per week until such time as they request the repayment of their money. Keep a dated copy of your letter and if they fail to respond then in 12 weeks they will have to pay you $600 to retrieve their $600. If they come back to you anytime after that they will OWE YOU money - but I wouldn't push for payment on that one. I have successfully used this approach with companies who send unsolicited goods and expect me to mess about returning them if I don't want them. I tell them the weekly fee I am charging them for storage and they quickly make arrangements to either take their goods back or (in one case) told me to keep them. Question: I live in half of a duplex together with other college students. I put my rent (roughly $750 in cash) in the landlord's mailbox while he was out of town for three weeks. I told him ahead that I would do this, but he claims I never did, and he would have asked me not to. Anyway, now he claims the money was not there when he returned and I still owe $750.  Answer: Well, that's tough. It could be that the money was stolen from the mailbox. It could be that the landlord pocketed the money and is trying to scam you. Your problem is that you have no receipt, and no evidence at all that you paid the money. There's little you can do other than paying up (again) and learning from this expensive lesson. What you are describing here is the opposite of a problem: You're trying to contact a debt-collector to pay them money, but THEY'RE ignoring YOU and won't return your calls!  LOL!  All joking aside, having 'incidental' charges show up as negative marks on your credit history is an annoyance- thankfully you're not the first to deal with such problems, and there are processes in place to remedy the situation. Contact the credit bureau(s) on which the debt is listed, and file a petition to have it removed from your history.  If everything that you say here is true, then it should be relatively easy. Edit: See here for Equifax's dispute resolution process- it sounds like you've already completed the first two steps. My bank did fine the first couple years of handling my escrow, then out of the blue, totally messed it up and cost me a lot of time straightening it all out with them as well as straightening out with my taxing authority.  I told them to send me the balance of the escrow and cancel it, that I would handle it from then on and they did.  There was a qualification that I met, I just can't remember what that was. I too have a lot of equity and was never late on a payment.  I also manage it via direct deposit from my paychecks into interest bearing accounts. Street name is not what you think it is in the question.  The broker is the owner in street name.  There is no external secondary owner information.   I don't know if there is available independent verification, but if the broker is in the US and they go out of business suddenly, you can make a claim to the SIPC. "Any clearing/ legal experts out there?  Is this possible- and if so, is it that big of a deal? Here are my thoughts:  1. The EU is right to request euros to be cleared on ""home soil"" for sovereignty reasons since 2/3s of euro currency is cleared in London.  2. Moving euro clearing back to the eurozone... would just mirror US regulations.  Whats the big deal?" According to the article this is not actually a fine, they are just buying back the mortgages they sold in the first place. One has to wonder if they are buying them back at the same price that they sold them or if it's a discount. E.g. They sold you a lemon for $1000, offer to buy it back for $10? Other questions: If they are buying them back then are they now going to start foreclosing like criminals like BoA did? Sorry, this is sensationalist bullshit. Escrow payments have been around forever - they're not specific to BofA or the mortgage bubble, they've probably been common practice for decades. It's a much easier way for many people to pay their taxes and insurance, and banks don't net any profit for doing this*. Rather, it's an easy way for them to keep tabs on whether homeowners have insurance or not - if a home is uninsured by the owner the bank will have to insure it on its own.   (* banks are entitled to collect some escrow overage - I think it's 8% - in the event that taxes or insurance are higher than expected, but that is still the homeowners money, and would be cashed out in a payoff.)