How long should you keep your mortgage statements?

A well-documented mortgage is important for financial planning and tax purposes. Mortgage loans come with a vast amount of paperwork, from the original promissory note to the monthly receipts for payments to the annual mortgage statements that report how much was paid, your escrow account and other pertinent items. The safest option is to hold on to these records forever - but in reality, you probably won’t want to have your filing cabinets overflowing with old mortgage statements and financial documents. The following guidelines are only recommendations - depending on your situation, you may want to discuss your personal record retention policies with your tax adviser or financial planner.

Monthly Mortgage Receipts

Monthly mortgage receipts are typically a simple quarter sheet of paper that serve as confirmation that the bank received your check. These should be held on to for at least a year, until you receive your annual mortgage statement, which includes a summary of your payment. This way, if your annual statement indicates that you missed or were late on a payment, you can back it up with your monthly mortgage receipts.

Annual Mortgage Statements

Most financial experts recommend keeping your annual mortgage statements for three years. That’s because you’ll be deducting mortgage interest on your tax return, and you’ll want to have these handy in case the IRS initiates an audit or asks for more proof. To be on the safe side, you may just want to keep all of these for the life of the loan - you’ll only have about 30 total. Once you get the promissory note stamped “PAID AND CANCELED,” you should hang on to your annual mortgage statements for an additional three years. Afterwards, you can throw away all of your old annual mortgage statements.

Loan Documents, Promissory Notes, HUD Statements and Security Instruments

Documents that you received when you closed on your home should be held on to for 10 years, if not forever. You should most certainly have these on hand for the entire life of the loan, but you should hang on to them for three years after you sell the home, if not indefinitely. You never know when these things will come in handy. You should also hang on to mortgage refinance documents, receipts and statements for remodels and improvements and records of any costs incurred from selling or buying the home.

If you were looking for reassurance that you don’t need to keep all that paper laying around, unfortunately, you won’t find it here. It’s always safer to keep well-organized documents about your home for as long as possible. To make it easier, you may want to consider scanning them and saving them in PDF form. Keep hard copies for a few months, in case of hard drive failure, and back up your documents electronically and securely. For important documents, consider keeping them in a safe deposit box.