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.
It's interesting that the most upvoted comments miss the point entirely.  They did not have tax/insurance escrows.  They make the point that they were not *required* by their loan docs to have escrows.  Further, they make the point that despite not being required to have escrows **AND** being current on taxes and insurance, B of A paid the taxes in duplicate and **forced** insurance.  I have several mortgages with B of A from acquired companies.  I have been current on insurance on all accounts with the same insurance provider since before the four years or so BoA has owned/serviced the accounts.  At least once a year BoA either notices me that they are going to or actually does force place insurance.  If I don't catch them in time it can be 8-10 phone calls over several months to get credited back properly. "It's a scam. The cashier's check will be forged. Craigslist has a warning about it here (item #3). What kind of payment do you think is not fakable? Or at least not   likely to be used in scams? When on craigslist - deal only locally and in person. You can ask to see the person's ID if you're being paid by check When being paid by check, how can seeing his/her ID help? In case the   check isn't cashable, I can find that person by keeping record of   his/her ID?  If you're paid by check, the payers details should be printed on the check. By checking the ID you can verify that the details match (name/address), so you can find the payer later. Of course the ID can be faked too, but there's so much you can do to protect yourself. You'll get better protection (including verified escrow service) by selling on eBay. Is being paid by cash the safest way currently,   although cash can be faked too, but it is the least common thing that   is faked currently? Do you recommend to first deposit the cash into a   bank (so that let the bank verify if the cash is faked), before   delivering the good?  For Craigslist, use cash and meet locally. That rules out most scams as a seller. What payment methods do you think are relatively safe currently?   Then getting checks must be the least favorite way of being paid. Do   you think cash is better than money order or cashier order?  You should only accept cash. If it is a large transaction, you can meet them at your bank, have them get cash, and you receive the cash from the bank. Back to the quoted scam, how will they later manipulate me? Are they interested in   my stuffs on moving sale, or in my money? They will probably ""accidentally"" overpay you and ask for a refund of some portion of the overpayment. In that case you will be out the entire amount that you send back to them and possibly some fees from your bank for cashing a bad check." "For a fight this big it would be done via an escrow account and the terms would be set in advance. There would be no ""check"" for him to cash. He has no idea what he's saying and this is probably why he is in trouble with the IRS. He is using the same concepts for a $10 doctor's visit copay and applying it to a multimillion dollar contract with giant media conglomerates." If the bank will escrow your property tax they may want as much as a full quarter's worth in advance. Closing costs can range from zero to 2% or so of the mortgage.  On the $100k house, I'd have $8-10k in a maintenance/repair fund. Much of this will depend on how old the house is and the condition of the systems. Everything powered will fail eventually, the heating/cooling systems, water heater, dishwasher, oven/microwave, fridge, pump if there's well water. All these listed items each have a range of cost depending on size, style, power, etc. You can report the violation to the payment network (i.e., Mastercard or Visa).  For instance here is a report form for Visa and here is one for MasterCard.  I just found those by googling; there are no doubt other ways of contacting the companies. Needless to say, you shouldn't expect that this will result in an immediate hammer of justice being brought down on the merchant.  Given the presence of large-scale fraud schemes, it's unlikely Visa is going to come after every little corner store owner who charges a naughty 50-cent surcharge.  It is also unlikely that threatening to do this will scare the merchant enough to get them to drop the fee on your individual transaction.  (Many times the cashier will be someone who has no idea how the process actually works, and won't even understand the threat.)  However, this is the real solution in that it allows the payment networks to track these violations, and (at least in theory) they could come after the merchant if they notice a lot of violations. "is there a legal service online where, for a modest fee, you could have someone fire off a ""fuck you, we have no intention of paying"" letter to these companies in case you're ever contacted and shaken down?  The movie industry are reducing their legal fees by hiring companies to automate the whole process and process lawsuits in bulk. Can't people targetted by these clowns have their own equivalent?  I'd consider $30-$40 as a reasonable fee to fire off a standard letter by registered mail. There's no reason it should cost as much as putting a lawyer on retainer." "As mentioned before - you're over-thinking the hard-pull issue. But do try to make the preapproval as close to the actual bidding as possible - because it costs money. At least from my experience, you'll get charged the application fee for preapproval, while ""pre-qualification"" is usually free. If you're seriously shopping, I find it hard to believe that you can't find a house within 3 months. If you're already in the process and your offer has been accepted and you opened the escrow - I believe the preapproval will be extended if it expires before closing. I've just had a similar case from the other side, as a buyer, and the seller had a short-sale approval that expired before closing. It was extended to make the deal happen, and that's when the bank is actually loosing money. So don't worry about that. If you haven't even started the process and the preapproval expired, you might have to start it all over again from scratch, including all the fees. The credit score is a minor issue (unless you do it every 2-3 months)." &gt;wasn't told he still needed to pay back the difference in the loan once he did   Ouch. Even though sometimes you dont have to pay the difference if the collateral wasnt sold in a commercially reasonable manner. Its been a while since ive read title 9, but there are a lot if rules about selling collateral after repossession. It sounds like the collection company really screwed him over by selling way under market.