When you purchase a property, for the most part, lenders allow you to elect to impound your taxes and your home owners insurance or not to.  This allows you the choice to either pay your taxes seperately or to include them in the monthly payment that you send to the mortgage company every month.  As far as the amount of tax you pay, it makes no difference the method you choose.  If you send a little bit every month with your mortgage payment or if you send the taxes twice a year on your own (this means your mortgage is not impounded) you'll still be paying the same amount in property taxes. 

People don't impound their taxes and insurance because of money.  When you have impounds, you have to pay roughly 3 to 6 months worth of taxes up front, depending on what time of year it is.  That way, when the next tax bill comes to the lender, the money is already there ready to pay the bill.  Each subsequent bill after that can be paid with the extra money that you send every single month with your mortgage payment specifically to your impound account.  When given the choice, most don't want to part with the upfront money required when setting up an impound account so they just don't set one up. 

The problem is that when you purchase your property not only will you have to pay your normal property tax bill, but during the first year you will be assessed a supplemental tax bill, which can amount to a few thousand dollars in addition to your typical tax bill.  This can catch a borrower off guard and be enough to start that borrower on a crash course leading to late mortgage payments.   Some borrowers may never recover because they didn't plan ahead.  

Moral of the story: Plan ahead.  Coach your borrowers.  We want to keep our clients for life both as real estate agents and lenders.  If we do a good job coaching our borrowers and checking up on them, they will be in better shape to handle what's coming their way and your clients will appreciate that. 

If you help your clients get into a home and they lose it to foreclosure, the chances of them being your happy past client dissappear!