There are few things in my adult life that I have looked forward to like I’ve looked forward to having my home 20% paid off. That may be an indicator that I live a sheltered or very boring life, but so be it. And it isn’t so much the reduction of debt that had me looking forward to this milestone either, though that doesn’t hurt. No, it is the PMI that I detest. Twenty-five dollars a month flies out the window whether I like it or not and only because my house was only 19.32% paid off.
As the 20% milestone approached, I eagerly checked against my amortization schedule to see how close I was. Finally we crossed the 20% demarcation. And my mortgage didn’t go down by $25. I narrowed my eyes at the statement, tilted my head, but decided that maybe, maybe, they would drop it next month and this month’s $25 was really for last months PMI.
Nope. They kept charging us. When we hit the 20.8% mark I sicked my husband on the mortgage company (I’m a phone-phobic you know). They assured him they would be more than happy to drop that PMI if we would just order a $250 appraisal, payable to them of course, to ensure that our house was still what we paid for it back in 2003. And would it be a full appraisal? No. Of course not, it would be a drive by. And this would be different than the tax appraisals, how? Well, see in the tax appraisals, the mortgage company doesn’t make the previously mentioned $250 so they are therefore suspect.
Later that night, who should call us but our mortgage company. They just wanted to offer us a home equity line of credit. Guess how much money they decided our home was worth? Twenty thousand dollars more than we paid for it.
Excuse me, could you do me a favor and call your PMI department to let them know?
No comments:
Post a Comment