When people used to mail letters by post to stay in touch a common opening was “I hope this letter finds you well.”

It carried over from that.

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Probably the payment went up because of the taxes or insurance. Or maybe they didn’t have an escrow account and didn’t pay taxes or insurance and it was force placed.

If you have a variable rate it could also go up for that reason. But most people when rates were low had fixed rate mortgages.