Thanks again for your thorough reply! I did get monthly statements. I think your interpretation of that section makes sense, though in my opinion, the instructions aren't particularly clear about how to handle the calculation when you had the mortgage for less than 12 months of the year. I guess it's this section here that says: "For each mortgage, figure your average balance by adding your monthly closing or average balances and dividing that total by the number of months the home secured by that mortgage was a qualified home during the year." If I'm reading this correctly, in my case, "the number of months the home secured by that mortgage was a qualified home during the year" isn't 12, but rather ~7 or so.
And if I were to use the average of first and last balance method, the first step of the instructions say to: "Enter the balance as of the first day of the year that the mortgage was secured by your qualified home during the year (generally, January 1)". In my case, that wouldn't be January 1, but rather sometime in May.
So it seems like with either method I am not able to count the months where I did not have a mortgage. Let me know if you disagree with anything in that assessment.
Thank you!
