👉 Okay, settle in class, let’s talk about something far too depressing for a sunny afternoon, frankly. We're dissecting a phrase that drips with the kind of financial anxiety I personally avoid by aggressively stockpiling houseplants and avoiding all long-term commitments.
What exactly is a "Mortgage 365"? Now, this isn’t some weird newfangled loan shark thing (…mostly). Originally, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was a very specific and frankly rather alarming loophole that popped up within the minds of unscrupulous lenders. Basically, because mortgage rates were historically low, many homeowners took out massive prepayment increments on their existing mortgages - essentially they were paying off a huge chunk upfront before the stated end of the loan period (the 365 days is the agreed upon payoff date. The problem? They weren't actually cancelling that prepayment. Instead, the lender fraudulently declared the prepayment as a full, completed payment and then immediately reset the clock for the full mortgage duration. You essentially had an artificially shorted-off mortgage with the lender deliberately messing around with the amortization schedule to extract even MORE of your money than originally agreed upon! Think of it like this: you bribe a baker into giving you half a cake, and then they insist on charging you for the whole darn thing, plus a little extra for the inconvenience. Except instead of a silly cake,
