Reappraise Your Home to Cancel PMI

You may remember last month when I blogged about Steve starting the process of getting his home reappraised and the private mortgage insurance, which ran about $190/mo, cancelled. It turns out the process was pretty painless and this trumps all the other “save some money with a fifteen minute phone call” posts ever because Steve estimates he will save about nearly $8000 over the next three and a half years by not having to pay PMI.

I’m happy to report that I received an approval on the elimination of PMI from my mortgage. The process was virtually effortless and I’m now saving approximately $190 per month by eliminating the PMI. The cost of the application fee will pay for itself in less than two months and I have already received a refund check for one month of overpayment. So, this whole process was well worth the hour or two on the phone, the time spent getting the home appraisal, and the money spent on the application. The whole process took less than 6 weeks to complete. Time to celebrate by putting some money aside for my daughter’s education!

…

I figure I was about 3.5 years away from being at 80%, so I saved around $7,685, after taking into account the application fee. And taking into account that this was all paid with taxable dollars, it was even more from my gross pay. I should have done this a year
ago!

Steve

So to recap… Steve simply called up his mortgage lender and requested that the home be reappraised, so a loan to value percentage could be recalculated. The mortgage lender agreed and ordered a home appraisal at a cost of around $300 to Steve. The appraisal came back such that his loan to value was under 80%, the mortgage lender churned the paperwork, and his PMI cancellation request was approved. I’d say that was a pretty successful transaction.