Mortgage company may not give you an option to pay taxes yourself

If you hold enough money aside it's probably better to deal with the taxes and insurance yourself, you won't have to put the money up front into an escrow account. I did the taxes and insurance with the mortgage and that's what makes your payment go up every year. They will usually spread it across 12 months so the number isn't that big, but you're required to keep a decent amount in escrow so they can make the payments for you. It may cut down on your mortgage options if you decide to go non escrow. When we got the principal balance down to around $3000, I realized there was $2900 in the escrow so I paid it off and almost got back all the money. Until 2 weeks later when the quarterly taxes were due! :facepalm:

I rolled it all together, thought it was easier just to cut one check monthly. But with on-line banking it's just as easy to spilt it up.

Offer pending, and am down to 4.0% even thus far.

4.0 is pretty good these days. I lucked out on my refi and got 3.5 a couple years back when rates were at their lowest.

Hi, you talk about 4%, I've found that non-US residents has the mortgage interest rate from 3% (December 2016 data) here https://tranio.com/usa/mortgage/. Ofc it depends on loan term.
I suppose that it will bee increased gradually for all