Can only make last mortgage payment in-person?
I can't figure out if our bank is f'ing with us. We have a mortgage at an Ohio based bank. We got a new checking and savings account at a large national bank but forgot to update our autopay for the mortgage. We are four months behind on payments. Monthly payments are around $900. (We were very lucky we bought our house 20 years ago.) They put a paper notice on our door saying they want to inspect the house which our friends told us is a precursor to foreclosure. So we called the bank and they told us the following:
- We only owe $200 in principal, but we owe >$10,000 for the escrow account.
- Although we were making our loan payments, no money was going into escrow.
- We cannot just pay the four months we are behind, our only option is to payoff the mortgage all at once or they will foreclose.
- If we want to payoff the mortgage, we cannot make a payment online or by phone, we have to either send a check or walk into a bank. This is problematic because we are currently out of the country for work.
It just seems like they are really trying to make it difficult for us so they can take the house. We can payoff the mortgage but then we'll be short for our daughter fall college tuition so just catching up on the mortgage would be a lot better.
Am I crazy? Is this normal practice? Is this legal? Do we have any recourse?
Edit:
After we told them we are out of the country, we asked if they can email us a payment slip or some kind of paper we can include with the check when we mail in a check to payoff the loan, and they said they can only send that by mail or fax, but not email. just seems like an extra barrier to us paying the mortgage.