<p>CSS is asking for mortgage. How do we report this when we we pay PI separately from Ins and Taxes?</p>
<p>Same answer as in 2010:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1037129-css-profile-does-mortgage-payment-include-piti.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1037129-css-profile-does-mortgage-payment-include-piti.html</a></p>
<p>You are not supposed to include this stuff. But if you read these forums, quite often people who escrow do just write down the amount of their entire payment - and sometimes people who have HELOCs roll that into their monthly amount as well. </p>
<p>I do not think the intent is to mislead; more likely, people do not understand the rules, which are not very well explained in the line-by-line instructions.</p>
<p>If you have high property taxes, I would note the monthly amount someplace - either in the comments section, or in your monthly household budget if the college asks for that data (my daughter’s school does).</p>
<p>Snow dog…who doesn’t have high property taxes? :)</p>
<p>^ When we lived in the city of Philadelphia (until mid-1999), our taxes on a 3BR row house were less than $800 per year. Pretty darn low. Where I live now my property taxes are less than $6000 per year on a 5BR house on 2 acres in an excellent school system. I think that is low.</p>
<p>Don’t most people pay ins & taxes separately?
Waste of money otherwise.</p>
<p>How the heck do you keep up on your mortgage, if you have been unemployed for five years?
I need to learn that trick!
;)</p>
<p>Are you talking to me, emeraldkity? I am self employed and I work 60-70 hours a week to keep ahead of the bills, which includes a child in college and another soon to go. Barely getting by in fact but I still think in comparison to some locales my property taxes are reasonable.</p>
<p>Where I live now my property taxes are less than $6000 per year on a 5BR house on 2 acres in an excellent school system. I think that is low.</p>
<p>To me, my property taxes are low. 4600 sq ft home, 1/2 acre, and taxes are about 3000 per year. 
Although my kids went to private K-12, the school district is very good.</p>
<p>Snow dog…the OP says he has been unemployed for five years!</p>
<p>Oh? I don’t see that. Perhaps he is living off a spouse’s salary…</p>
<p>Don’t most people pay ins & taxes separately?
Waste of money otherwise.</p>
<p>Most people with a mortgage are probably required by the mortgage company to pay an escrow amount each month to cover taxes and insurance, which are then paid out of escrow by the mortgage company when they are billed.</p>
<p>Why would this be a waste of money?</p>
<p>Because you are giving your lender money before it is due to invest.
You also are dependent on the lender paying your ins & taxes appropriately.
They don’t always do so.</p>
<p>However if you aren’t very organized & lack discipline to set money aside for upcoming bills I agree that an escrow account can be a good way to manage that.</p>
<p>Around here it depends on the size of your down payment as to whether a lender will require escrowing taxes and insurance. Similar to mortgage insurance, 20% down is often the magic number. Some people do it as an aid to self discipline on spending throughout the year and sometimes you get a little better mortgage rate with escrowing, maybe an 1/8 of a point. It removes a little of the risk to the lender to be able to know during the year that taxes and insurance will be paid.</p>
<p>Because you are giving your lender money before it is due to invest.
You also are dependent on the lender paying your ins & taxes appropriately.
They don’t always do so.</p>
<p>If the lender fails to pay when due, then that’s on them. As I said, I think that most people who pay into escrow do so because they are required to do so.</p>
<p>And the lender does not have the money to invest. It goes into a dedicated escrow account that earns interest for the borrower. There is no “waste of money.”</p>
<p>Lenders screw up escrow accounts all the time. And getting it resolved can be a nightmare. I know someone whose lender (my employer at the time) paid property taxes on 123 Main Street instead of the correct address of 123 Main Court, and no one realized this until the the customer started getting delinquent tax notices in the mail. The county would not transfer the funds from the wrong property to the correct one - leaving the lender to try and get the money back from the wrongly paid homeowners before they were willing to pay the taxes on the property they messed up on. This is just one example. I have worked in mortgage lending for 20+ years and I will NEVER have an escrow and I advise my friends and family to avoid it if possible - put 20% down if you can.</p>
<p>Lenders do NOT pay interest on the escrow account unless required by state law.</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that lenders screw up escrow accounts from time to time. But if they do, it’s their responsibility to fix things. Putting 20% down is not an automatic no-escrow-required situation. Again, it depends on the lender. Many lenders will require an escrow account regardless of equity in order to protect their interest in the property.</p>
<p>Yes, only a minority of states require that interest be paid on escrow, and it’s not likely that a lender will pay interest unless it’s required to by law. Thank you for that clarification. But based on current interest rates, unless the tax and/or insurance bills are ginormous, we’re only talking about a few dollars a year.</p>
<p>If you put 20% down, you will be able to find a lender who does not require escrow. A lender who wants escrow with a 20% down payment would not get my business. Many states have laws that require escrows to be optional with a 20% down payment.</p>
<p>And while it is the lender’s responsibility to fix a mistake made to someone’s escrow account - it is the homeowner who suffers if their insurance coverage is dropped or the property taxes are delinquent because of a lender snafu. </p>
<p>If you are responsible and financially solvent enough to own a home and pay a mortgage, you should be able to pay your own taxes and insurance.</p>
<p>If you do have an escrow account, just be sure to check it monthly. Make sure the proper portion of your monthly payment is credited to the escrow balance and that insurance and taxes are paid on time. Take your due diligence a step further and verify with your insurance company and your city/county that your bills are paid. I have seen numerous cases where the funds leave the escrow account - so the homeowner assumes the insurance bill or tax bill was paid - but the funds never arrived at their destination. The lender paid an incorrect insurance company, paid taxes on the wrong account with your funds, etc. Don’t assume they will do it correctly - monitor your escrow.
.</p>
<p>Back to OP’s question. I finished and submitted the CSS last week. When it asked for my monthly mortgage payment, I just filled in the total amount on my monthly statement, which includes PITI. Was this wrong? And should I fix it?</p>