[jholzknecht]

We had a lot of good questions last week. Here are the answers to a few questions that we didn’t get to prior to the end of the meetings.

from Linda to Everyone:
If we net it out, are we still required to send final escrow analysis statement?
Answer: Yes

from FNB to Everyone:
We have a county that will not mail tax bills to the bank. They always mail the tax bill to the homeowner. If the homeowner does not bring us the bill and we know that the bill will be late after December 31st, is the bank responsible for trying to track down that bill prior to December 31st to ensure that the borrower is not charged a fee/penalty?
Answer: Yes. As a result of their lack of cooperation the county may get payments that are not in the correct amount. If they post electronically, payments arriving without a coupon may have to be manually posted. They can avoid this inconvenience by sending the tax bill to the escrow agent like the rest of world.

from Ami to Everyone:
Linda, we are in the same situation. Our counties are also online and we utilize a third party vendor that searches the tax parcels for our mortgaged properties. We end up looking up a lot of tax bills for our customers.

from Marcella to Everyone:
When a loan is in default can the escrow balance be retained to offset any loss?
Answer: The escrow rules in Section 1024.17(f) apply if the borrower is current at the time of the escrow account analysis. A borrower is current if the servicer receives the borrower’s payments within 30 days of the payment due date. If the servicer does not receive the borrower’s payment within 30 days of the payment due date, then the servicer may retain the surplus in the escrow account pursuant to the terms of the federally related mortgage loan documents. So instead of refunding the surplus on an account that is more than 30 days past the funds may be retaining in the account.

The new comment in Paragraph 34(b)(1) allows netting the balance in the escrow account against the outstanding balance of the mortgage loan when the borrower pays a mortgage loan in full. When you have a loss it does not appear that the borrower has paid the loan in full.

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