Read this before you spend anything
Of everything on this site, PMI removal is where owners most often pay for an appraisal that never had a chance of working. So here is the part that usually gets left off these pages.
The Homeowners Protection Act hands you two rights, and both are calculated on the property’s original value — what it was worth the day you bought it:
- Automatic termination once the balance reaches 78% of that original value, on the amortisation schedule.
- Cancellation on request at 80% of the same figure.
Neither needs an appraisal. They are arithmetic on your loan and nothing else.
Cancelling because the house has gone up in value is not one of those rights. It is a separate process, governed by your servicer’s policy and by whoever holds the loan, and they decide the terms — including whether an appraisal counts for anything.
Three questions, in writing, first
Before commissioning a report from us or from anybody:
- Do you cancel on current value? Some will not, full stop.
- What LTV and what seasoning? For conventional loans on Fannie Mae’s rules this is generally two years and 75%, or five years and 80%. Anything under two years generally needs documented improvements of substance behind it.
- Will you accept an appraisal I commission? This is the one that costs people money. A number of servicers accept only a valuation they ordered from their own panel.
If the answer to the third is “we order it”, your appraisal buys you nothing. Far better to discover that on a phone call than on an invoice.
Where the answers come back well, this is a straightforward assignment and usually a profitable one. Where they do not, we would rather tell you on the phone than take the work.
Then do the arithmetic
PMI on a typical purchase in this part of the state tends to run between $80 and $250 a month, depending on loan size, original LTV and credit profile.
Set that against the fee we quote you. At the middle of that range the payback is measured in months, and everything after it is yours to keep.
That is a good trade — if the value clears.
Which is the entire reason for screening first. If your equity looks marginal against the servicer’s required LTV, the sensible move is usually to wait. An appraisal landing two percentage points short is a real cost with nothing on the other side of it, and the figure will not be stretched to make the threshold.
Why it keeps coming up here
A great many houses in these counties were bought with less than 20% down between 2018 and 2021.
What followed carried a lot of those owners past their equity threshold years before the amortisation schedule would have. Plenty of them are still paying, because nobody looks closely at a mortgage statement that has not changed.
Worth checking anywhere in the service area, and especially where the run-up was steepest — Hunterdon, Somerset, Morris and Union.
If your loan is FHA
Then this route is generally closed. FHA mortgage insurance is not private mortgage insurance, whatever the monthly line on the statement looks like.
For loans endorsed on or after 3 June 2013 at a high original loan-to-value, the premium runs for the life of the loan and no appraisal will shift it. The way out is usually a refinance into a conventional loan — a conversation to have with a lender, not with an appraiser.
What you receive
A written appraisal with a current effective date, in whatever form the servicer has specified, carrying a signed USPAP certification.
It goes to you, and directly to the servicer if you instruct us to send it. Fee and turnaround confirmed in writing before anything starts.
New Jersey specifics
- Enough of Northern and Central New Jersey appreciated between 2020 and 2023 that a great many owners crossed their equity threshold years ahead of where the amortisation schedule would have taken them.
- It surfaces most often in the counties that ran up hardest — Hunterdon, Somerset, Morris and Union — but it is worth a look anywhere the purchase was made with under 20% down.
What you receive
- An appraisal with a current effective date
- A value conclusion in whatever form the servicer has told you they accept
- Signed USPAP certification
- Delivery to you and, on your instruction, direct to the servicer
What we need from you
- The servicer's PMI cancellation requirements, in writing
- Your origination date and the original purchase price or appraised value
- The current principal balance
- Interior access