I personally hate escrow accounts because of the buffer, they are essentially holding onto your money.

It's not hard to open a separate bank account and deposit enough each paycheck to cover the cost of insurance and taxes when they are due (assuming you have enough equity to get rid of it)

Check your mortgage agreement - it may require an escrow account.

Just deal with the escrow account. It'll likely just be $600 a month more this year. Then it will go down by about $300 a month the following year.

It depends on how well you track your finances, your level of discipline (will you in fact budget 1/12 of your property tax every year? Will you budget extra in case your insurance goes up?

I just stopped my escrow account because I can handle it, and I like being responsible for paying taxes when I want to and not worrying that a third party is going to mess them up. But I've done this all before.

Personally I don't have an escrow account and I prefer it this way. Some banks will penalize you for not using one by raising your interest rate or charging you a fee but fortunately I don't have that problem. I have a high yield savings that I put money in each month to cover the taxes, which is like an escrow account, but I'm in control of it and I get to keep the interest. I hate the required buffer - I do have a buffer but it's not as big as the back requires. Also my last house I had an escrow and the bank paid my taxes twice (because I refinanced, I was required to pay the next year's taxes up front at closing. Then the bank paid them a second time). It was a huge pain to get it sorted out. So I like having complete control over how and when my taxes get paid. I know some people don't have the discipline to save the right amount of money over the course of the year and not touch it, but I do and I'm a better steward of my money than my mortgage company.

I’ve never escrowed. I just budget my own bills each month and the county mails me my tax bill.

Now does that $7000 check hurt to write. Maybe. But I saved it each month in a separate account so it didn’t hurt this month’s budget.

When we bought our first house we specifically opted to pay taxes and insurance ourselves. I already pay other bills and our car insurance and home were bundled anyway. On our current house, we're paying insurance ourselves. We had to be at a higher percent down in order to pay taxes ourselves (we already put 20% down but I believe the bank required 30%). If you feel you can handle it then sure but you still need to discuss the specifics with your bank.

You may be required to have an escrow account, particularly if you're below a certain percentage of equity in your house. Lenders want to make sure that insurance is being kept up to date and taxes are being paid on properties that they have a significant amount of stake in.

But if you're allowed to drop it, then you may want to, assuming that you're organized enough and financially disciplined enough to weather a big tax payment every year instead of monthly installments. Your insurance company may give you a discount by paying your premiums annually rather than monthly, which you typically won't get when paying via escrow.

We do ours because we figure we're less likely to fuck it up and not even know about it compared to having the bank do it.

You have to be very comfortable with cash flow (we just pay insurance premium annually and property tax quarterly.) If you think you'd want to budget and divide it all into 12 monthly payments that's probably more hassle/risk then just using the escrow.

Also your mortgage may require escrow so you'd have to check that out.

Depends on what your taxes and insurance is. You normally have to have around 20% in equity before you can remove an escrow. I don’t have one and have to set aside $800 a month to cover taxes and insurance.

It almost never makes sense to pay your own taxes and insurance while you have a mortgage servicer, just for the sake of convenience.