$287,600. That was the number on a sticky note on my monitor for most of May. It's what our house needed to appraise for, at minimum, for us to drop private mortgage insurance. Our loan balance was about $215,700, and our servicer required that balance to be no more than 75 percent of a new appraised value. Divide one by the other and you get a number that means either a raise or a wasted $575.
On June 3, the email came: approved. Starting with the July 1 payment, the $96 a month in PMI is gone. Here's how it went for us, start to finish.
Why we could ask at all
We bought the Cape in April 2024 for $245,000 with 10 percent down, which meant a $220,500 loan and PMI from day one. On the original numbers, it would have stuck around for years. But values in our area went up, and when our property tax assessment notice came in February, it implied a market value of $279,200. That got me thinking.
Our servicer's rules, as I understood them from their website and one phone call: at least two years of on-time payments, a new appraisal ordered through them, and a loan balance at or under 75 percent of that new value. Different loan types and different servicers have different rules, so this is only what ours required. Anyone curious about their own loan should ask their servicer directly.
Here's what made me nervous. At $279,200, our balance would have been about 77 percent of value. Not enough. We needed the appraiser to see about $8,400 more house than the assessor did. When I did my Board of Review homework in March, comparable Cape sales in our area ran from $271,000 to $305,000, so it was possible. It wasn't certain.
The request and the appraisal
I called our servicer on April 28 and asked to start a PMI removal request. They emailed a form, which I signed and sent back that night. A few days later they confirmed we could proceed and scheduled an appraiser through their own vendor. The $575 fee was ours to pay up front, whatever the result.
The appraiser came on Tuesday, May 12. I took the afternoon off, which my new title apparently allows. Before she arrived, I printed a one-page list from the house sheet of what we'd changed since closing: attic and knee-wall insulation, a new water heater, a new sump pump with battery backup, the refinished upstairs floor, the PEX kitchen line and the frost-free sillcock. I don't know how much a list like that matters. It made me feel better to hand it over.
She spent about 45 minutes. Exterior measurements, photos of every room, the furnace and water heater, the basement and the garage. She didn't say anything about value, and I knew better than to ask, though I definitely followed her from room to room like a nervous realtor.
The wait
The report reached the servicer about a week later at $292,000. Our balance divided by that is just under 74 percent, clear of the line by about $4,400 of value. I'd love to say I stayed calm after that, but the approval itself took another two weeks, and I checked the servicer's portal every evening like it was a package that had been "out for delivery" since Tuesday.
The approval letter says PMI comes off effective with the July 1 payment. That takes our monthly payment from $2,127 to $2,031. Over a year that's $1,152, so the appraisal fee pays for itself in six months.
I'm not assuming $2,031 is our payment for long. The escrow analysis comes every August, and last year's raised our payment by $271. Whatever it says this time, at least PMI won't be in it.
Tessa took the sticky note off my monitor and moved it to the fridge, next to two wedding photos and a magnet from Traverse City. She says it stays there until the next number I'm nervous about. I told her that's the furnace. She said there's room.
