What to do legally? (issue concerning real estate)
Our mortgage escrow has been taking tax money out of our account on two land parcels for 5 years that we do not own and have never owned, in fact they don’t even exist on the city tax website. We have had our monthly mortgage amount raised every year due to this and as you can imagine we have struggled, had a car repossessed, bills piled up, been in and out of foreclosure numerous times, we have had to pay many mortgage penalties, ect. We need to know if we would have a good case to sue the mortgage company and/or tax office, for this has had us struggling for 5 years and we have lost almost everything because of it.
If we have a good case, does anybody know what type of lawyer we need? Or any recommendations for any good ones near Houston, TX?
I have called the mortgage co. every year it goes up and asked and they say it was because of taxes rising in the area, We even get copies of what the taxes are, and those 2 parcels have NEVER came to us, otherwise I would have put a stop to it, for we have seen our house note going up to something we can’t afford to pay.The mortgage company is blaming the city for sending them the bills, yet the city has been taking this money every year for parcels that do not exist and has never sent us the copies, so why would they send it to our mortgage company? It has already been proven that they are not our parcels and I requested the Escrow statements since we have owned the home and they show paid on every year following the year after we bought the home, so a total of 5 years this has been going on behind our backs.. They started sending us the breakdowns of the escrow just this year, thats when I saw the 2 extra parcels on there. The mortgage company is “working” on this matter now, but they were supposed to be done by July 24th, and I don’t get any straight answers from them ever, this is our first home and we were not even sure how escrow worked, so I am unsure on what to do, do I get a lawyer for compensation on all that we have lost trying to keep up with the house note, or just go with what the mortgage company “says” we are due? And wouldn’t the city be just as responsible as the mortgage company, seeing how the parcels don’t even exist, yet they have been billing for them and taking the money!… HELP PLEASE!
Thanks in advance!
As for letting it go on so long, as I said, I have called every year and the mortgage co gave me the tax numbers and it matched my copies, but now I see it was because I had to give them each parcel number so they could pull it up..so I guess thats why they didn’t give me the numbers on the ones we didn’t know of, they were not sending us escrow breakdowns, nor did we know what that even was at the time . But even when I called the city a few times they could only give me my information on what we DO own, considering, the other 2 parcels are not even existing and not in our name, so the city and county have denied any overpayment b/c they couldn’t look it up (we had to prove we were paying them through the mortgage docs). Also people who live around us were complaining too about their taxes going up every year so I thought it was like everybody else… but as I said, this is our first home, first escrow, first time dealing with taxes.. so I guess we are learning the hard way.
December 25th, 2008 at 4:58 am
I would think the place to start is with the tax assessor or treasurer. I would want to get to the bottom of their billing practices and determine how much I had over paid them and get a refund of that amount.
Once you have reconciled the assessors billing to what the correct amount should be for your property, I would get back with the escrow department at your mortgage servicer to be sure that they run an escrow analysis based on the correct real estate taxes and home owners insurance amounts and that they refund any excess balance in the escrow account to me and correct the billing to reflect the correct amount.
I don’t know how this could have gone on so long and you should not need an attorney but if you do need one try calling the legal referral service in your area to see if they can advise you on what type of attorney you need and who might be able to help you in your area.
Good luck.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:19 am
I am amazed that this went on for five years and you didn’t know about it. Did you ever bother to check the proper tax bill for YOUR house, and then compare what the mortgage lender was paying out ??? I **** to say this, but it was pretty stupid of you to just assume everything was done properly.
Meanwhile, this sounds like a silly error compounded on both sides (mostly by YOU not complaining about it earlier). It’s going to take them some time to go back through their records and clear all of this up.
Sad to tell you, but you have no basis for lawsuit here. The best you can hope for is the refund of the taxes paid on those two fictitious parcels. Yes, the city and the mortgage company made errors, and you didn’t call it to their attention. You aren’t going to get compensated for YOUR negligence in not getting it corrected.