CCO Mortgage Review

Refi related: Here in NH, I locked in a 15 yr. refi the last day of Dec. '08 and closed in Mar. '09. During this period, it seemed the NH office that we were dealing with was woefully understaffed, which made responsiveness an issue. However, balance that piece with us obtaining a 15 yr. refi rate of 4.375%. Thus, I usually had no issue with having to make more calls than I was used to doing, in order to make sure things were tracking well. I did have to push to ensure that I locked at the above mentioned rate; again, one individual was being besieged with handling refis, and CCO had not yet gotten him additional staff to reduce his considerable (18 hour day) workload. On the day of closing, we were to close at 6:30 pm at our house, and CCO didn't get the last piece of paper to the closing agent until 3 pm, which was interesting.

Yes, CCO could have been better at providing me more timely updates. I like having information at my disposal, but once I found out about the staffing piece (remember that this was at the period of time when the refi market was flooded!), I could put things in perspective and accepted that info would flow a slower than I liked unless I took the initiative and got on the phone from time to time. The upside to me taking the initiative was that it kept me fully engaged and increased our level of accountability in the process - that old adage related to "If you want to have something done right, do it yourself" comes to mind. I will say that e-mail.

Escrow related: Last month we received notification of a modest (under $800) escrow shortage that will lead to increasing our monthly payment by approx. $100. NOTE: We have received such notification with our previous mortgage company. However, the shortage is due to the NH local property tax system and not CCO. We had been contributing some extra escrow $ each month, knowing the issues the NH system presents; otherwise, we'd have had to pay $700 more in escrow. On the flip side, we received escrow $ back from our old mortgage company, and I should have moved some of that returned escrow immediately into the CCO escrow account. Furthermore, I fully accept that: 1) I could have figured out the taxes myself, 2) calculated the yealy shortage, and 3) paid even more extra into the escrow acocunt. So I'll be an adult and take some responsibility for that.

Website related: I find using the CCO website easy for making monthly mortgage payments, including being able to pay additional principal and additional escrow. Payment notification is excellent. There are a number of tools that are useful including the amoritization tables. FYI - just checked the site and it's down for maintenance at the moment; however, it's early Sunday and that seems reasonable.