A shortage that size three months after closing usually means the escrow account was set up wrong at closing, and the most common culprit is a lowball property tax estimate. Escrow accounts collect a little each month for your property taxes and insurance. Servicers are required to reconcile them, typically once a year, and they cannot systematically over-collect. So a gap this big this early points to a setup error. On new construction, the classic version is a lender who set up the account using the tax bill on the empty lot or the pre-improvement assessed value instead of the anticipated bill on the finished home. Your monthly escrow was too low from day one, and the shortage is the catch-up. In a state like California, where property tax rates and reassessment rules are easy to look up in advance, a competent lender should not miss that. What we would do: - Pull your Closing Disclosure and the shortage letter and compare the tax figure the lender used against the real anticipated bill. - Verify the new monthly amount is correct before choosing how to pay. You can generally pay a shortage as a lump sum or spread it over twelve months, but fix the underlying number first so you are not back in the same spot next year. That line-by-line review is exactly the kind of thing we can walk through in the free Roadmap conversation, about 20 minutes, where we run your real numbers.