Even if you don't ask your servicer to cancel PMI, in general, your servicer must automatically terminate PMI on the date when your principal balance is scheduled to reach 78 percent of the original value of your home. For your PMI to be cancelled on that date, you need to be current on your payments.
If you've owned the home for at least five years, and your loan balance is no more than 80 percent of the new valuation, you can ask for PMI cancellation. If you've owned the home for at least two years, your remaining mortgage balance must be no greater than 75 percent.
If the borrower is current on mortgage payments, PMI must be cancelled automatically once the LTV reaches 78 percent based on the original amortization schedule or when the midpoint of the amortization period is reached (i.e., 15 years on a 30-year mortgage).
If home values have gone up in your area or you've made a lot of improvements to your home, you could have more than 20% equity based on the home's current value. Providing the loan-to-value ratio with a new appraisal value meets the lender's requirements, you may be able to get PMI taken off.
You can remove PMI from your monthly payment after your home reaches 20% in equity, either by requesting its cancellation or refinancing the loan.
Many lenders (like Fannie Mae) also require a two-year “seasoning requirement,” meaning you can't have PMI removed until you've made two years' worth of on-time payments—even if your equity has grown above 20%. If it's been less than five years, you might even be required to have 25% worth of equity.
In most cases, removing mortgage insurance is a good thing. It will lower your monthly payment. Just remember to do some research before you make a decision. Depending on how you remove your mortgage insurance, you may have to consider other factors, such as refinancing expenses.
There are two ways for a borrower to request cancelation of PMI: a) based on the original value of your home or b) based on its current value. If you meet the qualifications for either of these methods, your mortgage servicer has to cancel your PMI upon request.
You can request PMI cancellation before it automatically terminates — when the principal loan balance reaches 80% of the home's original value (the date you're expected to reach 80% should be listed on your PMI disclosure form or provided by your lender).
For loans that are less than two years old, there must be substantial improvements made to the home that increased the value in order to use the current market value. “Substantial improvements” are renovations that substantially improved the property value or substantially extended the useful life of the home.
Since annual mortgage insurance is re-calculated each year, your PMI cost will go down every year as you pay off the loan. So if your loan balance fell to $190,000 in the second year of the loan, your PMI would go down to $1,900 a year, which would be about $158 a month.
Your PMI payments are typically added to your mortgage payments along with your property taxes and homeowner's insurance payments. Your PMI is recalculated yearly, so it will go down every year as you pay off your loan balance.
This is a cost that you will pay in installments each month as part of your monthly mortgage bill. In our example, your payments will be about $104.17 a month. Your FHA mortgage insurance costs are recalculated each year based on your average outstanding loan balance.
A good payment history. The rule is no payments 30 days late in the past 12 months and no 60-day late payments in the previous 24 months. Timely payments count when it comes to getting rid of PMI. Late payments can put you in a high-risk category, making it harder to cancel.
Most lenders require that your LTV ratio be 80% or lower before they will cancel your PMI. Note: Some lenders express the percentage in reverse, requiring at least 20% equity in the property, for example.
Lender-required cancellation under HPA
The lender must automatically cancel the mortgage insurance policy either: On the date the mortgage loan balance is first scheduled to reach 78% of original value, based solely on the initial amortization schedule2, regardless of the outstanding balance of the loan AND.
Once the home loan's LTV value reaches 80 percent, PMI is usually no longer required and can be requested to be removed from the monthly mortgage payment. Once a mortgage drops to 78 percent, the federal Homeowners Protection Act requires the lender to cancel PMI automatically.
Your home equity needs to be at least 20%, or you will need to pay for PMI. The good news is that you can request that your lender remove PMI once the principal balance of your loan reaches 80% of the original value of the property. To request removal, you will need to submit a request, in writing, to your lender.
After you've bought the home, you can typically request to stop paying PMI once you've reached 20% equity in your home. PMI is often canceled automatically once you've reached 22% equity. PMI only applies to conventional loans. Other types of loans often include their own types of mortgage insurance.
Simply put: if you have an FHA loan term of more than 15 years, have been paying it for at least 5 years, and have an LTV ratio of 78% or less, PMI can be removed from the loan.
The benefits of PMI are that it helps overcome the biggest hurdles to homeownership, which are housing affordability and inventory. PMI allows more people to buy homes now in a hot, higher-priced market, rather than waiting. But it comes with a price.
If you can easily afford it, you should probably put 20% down on a house. You'll avoid paying for private mortgage insurance, and you'll have a lower loan amount and smaller monthly payments to worry about. You could save a lot of money in the long run.
PMI example 1: If you have a credit score of 620 and make a 5% down payment (resulting in a 95% LTV ratio), the annual PMI cost would be 1.42% of the loan value. For a $300,000 home, that equals $4,047 per year, or $337 per month.
Is PMI based on credit score? Yes, your credit score affects how much private mortgage insurance will cost. A borrower with a higher credit score would likely pay a lower monthly premium for PMI than someone who has a lower credit score, even with the same down payment and mortgage amount.
PMI can be removed early when you reach an LTV of 80%, which can happens when: You make extra payments: If you've made extra payments or overpaid in certain months, you might not have to wait for automatic PMI cancellation.