by IlhanOmarsBrother
I bought a house with less than 20% down in a hot market five years ago. Based on Zillow and asking prices for other houses in my neighborhood, I figured my house has appreciated about 50% since then. My mortgage is a 30 yr conventional fixed from Bank of America. Last year, I started looking into getting my PMI dropped based on current home value and was told I would need to pay for an appraisal (about $650) and I would need a 78% loan to value to qualify for PMI deletion. My PMI is around $85/mo.
I got busy and for whatever reason didn’t move on the situation until I looked into it again this month. Now they only need a “property valuation” and not a full appraisal. Property Valuation takes about 10 minutes and someone comes over and takes photos of your house and then runs the comps and reports back to the bank. This only costs $105 now. I sent in a check and in a week a guy came over and took two photos of every room and asked me for a list of all the improvements I have made since moving in. About a week later I got notice from Bank of America that my PMI has been removed and my escrow account has already been re-adjusted. They sent me the comps and confirmed my assumption that values are indeed heading up very nicely.
Just a heads up to anyone using Bank of America and hasn’t dumped their PMI yet.