Sophfronia Scott

The Payoff Letter

Chase Home Finance
3415 Vision Drive
Columbus OH 43219
800-689-9136 Customer Care
800-689-0542 TDD/ Text Telephone

April 1, 2012

Sophfronia Scott
62 Turkey Hill Road
Newtown, CT 06470

Re: Home Mortgage Loan # ******2542
Payoff Letter

Dear Sophfronia Scott:

This letter is to acknowledge that Chase Home Finance (Chase) has received the funds to pay off your mortgage loan referenced above. Chase will forward an original executed release of lien for recording to the recorder’s office in the county where the property is located.

Until the release is processed, this letter will serve as proof that Chase has received the payoff funds. Within 30 days from receiving the payoff funds, Chase will forward any funds we receive in excess of the payoff amount and any remaining escrow funds for you. Unless notified of an address change, Chase will send the overpayment or escrow refund you are entitled to as a result of this payoff and your 1098 year-end interest statement to the mailing address used for sending this letter. To prevent a delay, please inform us of any change in your mailing address, but since your goal has been to always remain in this home such a change is highly unlikely.

You may contact the county or town recorder’s office for information about the time to process the lien release and how to obtain a recorded copy.

If Chase collected escrow funds for paying your mortgage taxes or insurance, you are now responsible for the payment of these items. Please contact your homeowner’s insurance agent and your taxing authority to advise them of the address to forward future bills and correspondence. As long as these payments are kept current—they are usually made on a yearly basis—you will not have to fear losing your home as was your concern each month when your mortgage payment came due.

You may now tell your son you have increased the probability that he can remain in the home for his entire childhood, and he will most likely have a tidy inheritance coming his way, depending on the health of the real estate market, when he is grown and you and your spouse are deceased. He may continue to tack up with pushpins, and not wall putty, the posters and drawings he makes for his room. The holes in the drywall do not seem to bother you as it does other parents and, after all, the walls are now yours. When he is a teenager, he may want to paint his room something other than the sunny yellow you thought appropriate when he was a baby. A gentle reminder for him to apply a bit of spackle to the tiny perforations before he does so should be adequate. The color black should be discouraged as rigorously as possible.

You are likely also thinking of the pencil markings in the basement mudroom, indicating the increase in your son’s height from the age of two. No one will paint over them now, at least not for many more years, unless you choose to do so yourself.

It is recommended, however, that a thorough de-cluttering take place at least once a year, focusing on the attic and basement spaces. This will prevent the property from developing hoarding issues and keep your home comfortable for years to come. Clutter accumulates in a more determined fashion when a family raises a child from infancy in one house. The four plastic storage bins of clothing, labeled with masking tape “0-3 months” and “6-9 months,” for example, are no longer necessary. If you were going to pass them on to a friend or family member you would have done so by now. Goodwill (www.Goodwill.org) or Big Brothers Big Sisters (www.bbbs.org) will arrange a home pick up for your convenience.

If you cannot bear to discard any of your son’s belongings after he has grown up and left the home, we suggest you ship them to his house to dispose of as he chooses.

But perhaps it is wrong to focus on this when all you really care about is the new certainty that you will always have your office, the red room with the yellow chaise and the connected library with the wall of books and your writing table. All this time you feared losing it when all you really had to do was let go of it and write.

This is the space that matters to you most. The large window with the plastic white lines that make it look like separate panes of glass frames the sun rising over the hill in the woods in the morning to shine on your desk just so. It is fitting to have such big windows, especially in autumn when the yellow leaves just outside blaze and fire your creativity. But then all windows are important to you. You moved into this house in January 2005, with a six-month old infant and only one car. Your one requirement was that the home be light and airy enough that no matter how long you spent in it each day with your baby you would never feel confined. The house turned out to be so bright, in fact, that you can follow the sun all around the property if you like, but these days you can stay in your office. This is the room where you sit on red cushions in a corner to pray like Thomas Merton, and you nap on the chaise like George Sand, and at your desk you write your letters like Anais Nin. It is yours now for as long as you like.

Your spouse, likewise, can keep the odd, sapphire blue color in his basement recording studio although, if forced to sell, you were more concerned with having to take down the extra walls and soundproofing he installed to create his perfect haven. You will still hear the sounds of hesitant trombonists beneath your feet as he teaches private lessons. You will also, unfortunately, have that eerie sense of a voice coming through the walls until you remember it’s most likely his muffled singing as he rehearses for his next gig. Please try to keep in mind your home is not haunted nor is there any record of it ever having been so.

Since you know you will stay in this house now you must be more vigilant in regularly cutting back the row of dwarf lilac bushes in front of the house. Otherwise they will become overgrown and you will have to admit neglect and defeat and have the bushes removed. You did not pay off your mortgage to experience such heartbreak.

Chase’s goal is to provide the highest level of quality service to each of our customers. If you have any questions, please contact Customer Care at 800-689-9136.

We appreciate the opportunity to have serviced your mortgage loan and hope that you will contact Chase for your future financial needs.

Sincerely,

Reconveyance Department, Chase Home Finance

Reconveyance Services for Alaska, Nevada and California are provided by J.P. Morgan Chase Custody Services, Inc.

Sophfronia Scott lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, with her husband and son and where she continues to fight a losing battle against the weeds in her flower beds. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She's author of the novel All I Need to Get By; her work has appeared in Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Saranac Review, Numéro Cinq, Barnstorm Literary Journal, NewYorkTimes.com and O, The Oprah Magazine. She’s completed her second novel and is on the faculty of Regis University’s Mile High MFA. She blogs at www.Sophfronia.com.

home  • archives  • submissions  • us