How to Get Rid of PMI

Private mortgage insurance is the fee that lets a borrower buy with less than 20% down — and the fee almost nobody diarizes an end date for. It arrives quietly inside the first mortgage payment and, left alone, it leaves on the slowest schedule the law allows. The end dates, plural, are written into federal law and into the disclosure form you were handed at closing. Getting rid of PMI is mostly a matter of knowing which date applies to you, what it costs to wait for it, and which levers pull it closer.

What PMI is, and what it costs

PMI is insurance on a conventional loan that protects the lender — not you — if you stop paying. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is blunt about this: if you fall behind, PMI does not protect you, and you can still lose the home. It is generally required when a conventional loan is taken with a down payment of less than 20% of the purchase price, and it is charged as a monthly premium inside your mortgage payment.

The price varies with your loan-to-value and credit score. Freddie Mac's consumer guidance puts the typical cost at about $30 to $70 a month for every $100,000 borrowed. Your own premium was set at closing and is printed on your Loan Estimate — the worked example below uses the middle of Freddie Mac's range, and shows the full range alongside, so you can see what your own figure would do to the totals.

The worked example: a $400,000 home, 10% down

Every date and dollar below comes from one example. A home bought for $400,000 with $40,000 down (10%), a conventional loan of $360,000 at the current 30-year average rate of 7.24% (Freddie Mac, week ending October 29, 2026), and a mid-range PMI premium of $180 a month — the middle of Freddie Mac's $108–$252 range for a loan this size. Payments shown are principal, interest and PMI only; taxes and homeowners insurance ride on top of any real payment and do not change the PMI dates. Our full methodology is on how we calculate.

Two features of this table deserve attention before the routes themselves. First, the timeline: on payments alone, at today's rates, a 90% loan takes 8 years and 7 months to pay down to 80% — because in the early years most of each payment is interest, and the balance moves slowly (the same slow-start arithmetic that drives 15-year vs 30-year mortgage). Second, the spread between the two legal dates: the 15 months between the 80% request date and the 78% automatic date cost $2,700 at this premium. That is the price of not asking.

Route 1: Ask at 80% — your legal right

Under the Homeowners Protection Act, you have the right to request cancellation on the date your principal balance is scheduled to fall to 80% of the original value of your home — "original value" meaning the lower of the purchase price or the appraised value at the time you bought (or the appraised value at a later refinance). In the worked example, that is the date the balance reaches $320,000: month 103. The scheduled date for your own loan is printed on the PMI disclosure form you received with your mortgage.

The CFPB lists the conditions your servicer is legally entitled to require:

• The request is made in writing
• You have a good payment history and are current on your payments
• You can certify there are no junior liens (such as a second mortgage) on the home
• You can provide evidence the home's value has not declined below its original value — a servicer may require an appraisal on this point

You do not have to wait for the scheduled date if your own payments get you there early: extra principal that pulls the actual balance to 80% ahead of schedule supports a request ahead of schedule too — that is Route 3, priced below.

Route 2: Wait for automatic termination at 78%

If you never ask, the law still ends PMI for you — later. Your servicer must automatically terminate PMI on the date the balance is scheduled to reach 78% of the original value, provided you are current on your payments; if you are behind, termination waits until shortly after you are caught up. In the example, that is month 118, at $312,000.

There is also a final backstop. If PMI has still not ended by the midpoint of your loan's amortization schedule — 15 years into a 30-year loan — the servicer must terminate it the month after the midpoint, even if the balance has not reached 78%. The midpoint rule mostly matters for loans with interest-only periods or other unusual structures, but it guarantees that on a conventional loan, PMI cannot literally run forever.

These protections apply to single-family principal residences with loans closed on or after July 29, 1999 — the Homeowners Protection Act's coverage as the CFPB states it. Loans outside that frame, and lender-paid mortgage insurance, follow different rules; your servicer can tell you which frame your loan sits in.

Route 3: Get there early — extra principal

The 80% test is a test of the balance, not the calendar. Every extra dollar of principal pulls the crossing date forward, and in the early years of a loan — when the scheduled balance barely moves — the effect is outsized. In the worked example, adding $200 a month of extra principal from the very first payment moves the 80% date from month 103 to month 68: almost three years sooner. PMI at $180 a month then totals $12,240 instead of $18,540 — $6,300 of premiums never paid, saved on top of the mortgage interest the extra principal also avoids. The servicer still applies the Route 1 conditions when you ask, so the request itself works exactly as above; only the date changes.

Route 4: A higher current value — appreciation and refinancing

Notice what the legal tests above are measured against: the original value. A home that has risen in price since purchase does not move the Homeowners Protection Act dates at all — they are fixed to the value on the day you bought. Current value enters through two side doors instead.

The first is your loan's investor. The CFPB notes that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac set their own PMI-cancellation guidelines, which can allow removal based on the home's current value — typically with an appraisal you pay for and with conditions such as a minimum time in the loan — and which can never be less favorable to you than the Act's floor. Ask your servicer, in those terms, whether your loan has a current-value cancellation path and what it requires.

The second door is a refinance. A new loan is measured against a new appraisal: if the current value makes the new loan 80% or less of the home's worth, the new loan carries no PMI at all. Whether refinancing is worth its closing costs is a separate calculation — it depends on the new rate against your existing one, which is the comparison priced in 15-year vs 30-year mortgage and the rate context in our Mortgages & Housing hub — but as a PMI exit it is mechanical and complete: the old loan, and its PMI, are gone.

The FHA exception: MIP does not fall off the same way

Everything above is conventional-loan law. If your loan is backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the insurance is called MIP, it is run by HUD rather than a private insurer, and the Homeowners Protection Act cancellation rights do not apply to it. Freddie Mac states the contrast directly: PMI can be cancelled once you reach 20% equity on a conventional loan, but not on FHA loans. VA loans sit outside this page's rules as well. For many FHA borrowers, the practical exit from mortgage insurance is the refinance in Route 4 — into a conventional loan, once equity reaches 20% — rather than any cancellation request on the FHA loan itself. If you are not sure which kind of loan you hold, it is stated on your Closing Disclosure, and your servicer can confirm it.

What these numbers leave out

The example counts PMI premiums for every month until the balance crosses each threshold; a real servicer processes a cancellation around your request and its own review, so your last premium or two can land either side of the dates here — the totals are the honest scale of the wait, not a billing prediction. The example also holds the home's value flat, because the legal dates do: neither appreciation nor decline changes the 80% and 78% schedule, though decline can block a Route 1 request until value recovers, per the CFPB's conditions. And PMI is modeled as a flat monthly premium, the most common structure the CFPB describes; single-premium and split-premium policies front-load the cost differently and are not re-priced here.