The way my city does taxes, it makes our escrow payment "swingy." We pay quarterly payments but they only set the new rate after 2 payments are paid. So suppose one year my property taxes are 10K and the next year it's 12K. In the 12K year we pay 2500 for our first 2 payments, then we've only paid 5K toward 12K total so it gets raised to 3500 for the next 2 payments to get us up to 12K for the year. At that point our mortgage company thinks, oh, your taxes are now 14K per year (3500 per quarter) and they raise our escrow payment accordingly. It all works out in the long run, but because escrow tries to bank several months worth of payments in advance, the cash flow on it is weird.