If you search for “bi-weekly mortgage” with an Internet search engine, you will be overwhelmed by the number of companies offering “Bi-weekly Mortgage Reduction Services” or “Bi-weekly Savings Programs.” Beware, you are entering dangerous waters.
Beware of Bi-Weekly Mortgage Reduction Services and Savings Programs
These “Reduction Services” and “Savings Programs” are charging you fees to “make a bi-weekly mortgage payment” for you. The enticement is that they will save you an impressive amount of money on your mortgage and reduce the number of years you pay on your mortgage.
The enticement is that they will make bi-weekly mortgage payments for you.
The real story is that they are not actually making bi-weekly payments on your mortgage. They are making bi-weekly deductions from your bank account. These funds are placed into an account from which your monthly mortgage payment is made (which only takes 24 deductions – but during the course of a year 26 deductions will be made from your account). With the extra 2 deductions, the “Service” makes an additional mortgage payment. In other words rather than making 12 mortgage payments, 13 payments are made.
The enticement is that they are providing a special service to you that would either not be possible for you to get on your own or that you won’t have the time or discipline to make it happen.
The real story is that you can easily make an additional mortgage payment each year. An easy way to do this is to have your mortgage payment automatically deducted from your account each month with an additional 1/12 payment to be applied to the principal amount. At the end of 12 months, you will have made an additional payment. And you won’t have to pay any fees to a “Service”.
Licensed in Colorado as Maestro LLC (DBA Mortgage Maestro Group) is an Equal Housing Lender.
Consumers wishing to file a complaint against a company or a residential Mortgage loan originator should complete and send a complaint form to the Texas department of savings and mortgage lending, 2601 North Lamar, suite 201, Austin, Texas 78705. Complaint forms and instructions may be obtained from the Department’s website at www.sml.texas.gov. A toll-free consumer hotline is available at 1-877-276-5550. The department maintains a recovery fund to make payments of certain actual out of pocket damages sustained by borrowers caused by acts of licensed residential mortgage loan originators. A written application for reimbursement from the recovery fund must be filed with and investigated by the department prior to the payment of a claim. For more information about the recovery fund, please consult the department’s website at www.sml.texas.gov.
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Notice. The HMDA data about our residential mortgage lending are available online for review. The data show geographic distribution of loans and applications; ethnicity, race, sex, age and income of applicants and borrowers; and information about loan approvals and denials. HMDA data for many other financial institutions are also available online. For more information, visit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s website.
Website by Sparkling Marketing, Inc.