How Do I Pay My First Mortgage Payment?

How do I pay my first mortgage payment? After closing the sale on buying a home it’s time to start sending payments to your mortgage servicer.

Buying a home is the most stressful event of modern life. Now that it’s done, you can breathe a sigh of relief, settle into homeownership and pay your first mortgage payment.

How Do I Pay My First Mortgage Payment?

With all the documentation involved in a home purchase, it’s reasonable to be unsure of exactly how much your mortgage payment is and where to send it. If the paperwork you’ve received isn’t clear about how to pay your mortgage, you’ll want to follow up with your lender for some clarity.

Mortgage servicers recognize that the “one-size-fits-all” customer service model is obsolete and offer a myriad of options for remitting payments. MBA, the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently released a chart of the week that looks at the many ways borrowers pay their mortgage.

How Do Borrowers Pay Monthly Mortgage Payments?

Nearly 30 percent of borrowers set up auto-pay through a checking or savings account to pay their mortgage. It’s the most popular mortgage payment method, and as MBA says, it’s arguably the “cleanest” form of payments for mortgage servicers.

Close to 25 percent of mortgage payments are sent via mail, with borrowers primarily responding to servicer communication through coupons, statements, and e-statements. Mail is still a standard way to make your mortgage payments, but borrowers should beware that a lot of statements are automatically generated and processed through the United States Postal Service.

A Common Mistake About How To Pay Your Mortgage

Don’t make this mistake about your mortgage payments: A lot of people think if you don’t receive a statement one month, it means you don’t need to make a mortgage payment. Your loan documents state that you are required to make each mortgage payment. (And, that’s true even if you make additional payments toward prepaying the balance.) Your mortgage statement could have failed to print, might have been stolen, or it may have gotten lost in the mail.

It’s why you need to closely track your mortgage payments. Follow up with your mortgage servicer immediately if you discover that you’ve missed a statement.

Pay Your Mortgage Automatically Each Month Electronically.

The best way to pay your mortgage is to set up an automatic payment through your bank or mortgage servicer’s website. More than 20 percent of borrowers pay their mortgage each month through their mortgage servicers website and one percent pay through loan servicer’s mobile application, a payment method that’s likely to grow as more loan servicers develop their own applications.

Third-party bill payment services account for more than 10 percent of mortgage payments and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) predicts this method will gain remittance share in the future. According to MBA, “Third-party payment services offer borrowers more control than auto-pay, but may result in payment complications when the escrow amount changes or an adjustable rate loan re-sets.”

Almost 5 percent of borrowers prefer to make mortgage payments in person at a local bank branch.

Regardless of how they choose to pay, what matters most is that homeowners are making their mortgage payments, and they’re making them on time. A recent study found that the number of borrowers paying late on one-to-four-unit residential properties in the fourth quarter of 2018 was at its lowest level since the first quarter of 2000.

The bottomline: Once you decide how to pay your mortgage, keep making your payments each month in a timely manner.