escrow

It may be more difficult for someone with a mortgage to prepay their real-estate taxes, because their mortgage servicer may pay their local taxes and homeowners insurance through an escrow account.

Nine months later, Santiago’s loan servicer told him that his escrow account had a negative balance of about $4,400 due to an unpaid property-tax bill of $5,700, the lawsuit said.

They used crowdfunding and took out a second mortgage on their home to scrape together $100,000 to pay for the procedure, setting $55,000 aside in what they thought was a safe escrow account.

But so, too, do signs that read “for sale” or “in escrow.”

He refers to everything from escrow companies to office management to carpet-cleaning services.