<prompt> Human: Hey Reddit. I bought a Multi Family home in the summer of 2012. It seemed like a great way to generate some income and the mortgage payments seemed low compared to what i would get for profit. The problem is that now the monthly payments have grown drastically. When I first bought the home the mortgage was around 1,275 per month. Now it is at about 1,600. This has cut into my profits drastically. I was not able to put down 20 at the time so unfortunately I pay mortgage insurance on top of home owners insurance. It seems that each year my mortgage went up 150. Is there anything I can do to put a leash on these payment hikes? After my money down I owed 158,000 and I now owe 149,000.  <response>: Make a spreadsheet with the following: First Column should be Date, which will contain the statement dates for every mortgage statement you have received. Second column is the principal portion of your payment. Third column is the interest portion of your payment. Fourth column is your principal interest. This is the base payment if you didnt have mortgage insurance or property taxes. Fifth column is your escrow payment which will likely include both property taxes and your mortgage insurance Sixth column is your mortgage insurance payment Seventh column is your property tax payment subtract mortgage insurance from escrow payment to get this Eighth column is your total mortgage payment, which should be 4th principal interest and 5th escrow s. Ninth column is your mortgage balance.Then type in the details of every mortgage statement you have, hopefully dating back to 2012.This will quickly show you the state of: Property Taxes Likely to increase over time, the question is how much Mortgage insurance payments Should stay steady or slightly decrease over time Principal vs. Interest principal should slowly increase over time, interest should slowly decrease over time The base mortgage payment itself. the principal interest should equal exactly the same over time if you have a fixed rate mortgage. And of course, the balance, which should slowly decrease.Warning, the interest is probably going to look outrageous to start...its going to be way higher than the principal and the rate of change is going to look painful. If you have a traditional 30-year fixed rate mortgage, that number will slowly flip over time as you make payments.If you get really fancy, you can calculate the rate of increase and use pretty graphs to show your progress and help visually spot any outliers. 