What Is PMI Mortgage Insurance?

How PMI Works and What It Costs

PMI kicks in on conventional loans the moment your down payment falls under 20% of the purchase price. That puts your loan-to-value ratio above 80%. Its whole job: protect the lender if you default. You foot the bill anyway, as a line item on your monthly payment. Expect 0.22% to 2.25% of the original loan amount per year. On a $300,000 loan, that's roughly $55 to $563 a month, depending on your credit score, down payment, and loan type. Score 740 or higher and you land at the low end. Below 680, you pay the high end. Three structures exist. Borrower-paid monthly PMI, which you can cancel later. Lender-paid PMI, baked into a higher interest rate and permanent unless you refinance. Single-premium PMI, paid upfront at 1% to 3% of the loan amount. FHA loans play by different rules. Every FHA loan carries a mortgage insurance premium (MIP), no matter the down payment: 1.75% upfront, plus 0.45% to 1.05% annually. Put down less than 10% on an FHA loan and MIP sticks around for the life of the loan. Your only way out is refinancing into a conventional loan.

The Mistake That Keeps Homeowners Paying PMI Longer Than They Should

The Homeowners Protection Act sets two different PMI endpoints, and most homeowners mix them up. At 80% loan-to-value, measured against your home's original value, you can request cancellation in writing. Key word: request. You have to ask, and you need a clean payment history: no payments 30 or more days late in the past 12 months, none 60 or more days late in the past 24. Automatic termination doesn't happen until 78% LTV. Here's the mistake: people assume PMI drops off on its own at 80% and keep paying it while the balance slowly amortizes down to 78%, which early in a 30-year loan can eat up a year or more of payments. Lenders are required to send an annual reminder of your cancellation rights, but they will not request the 80% cancellation for you. That's on you. If your home's value has climbed, and plenty of Florida markets have seen that in recent years, ask your servicer whether a new appraisal can prove you've already crossed the threshold. Servicers set their own rules on using current value instead of original value, so put the request in writing. The worst thing they can say is no.

What PMI Means When You Sell Your Florida Home

Two things Florida sellers need to know. First: PMI never blocks a sale. Sell the house, and the loan gets paid off at closing, taking the PMI obligation with it. You don't need 20% equity to sell, and there's no PMI penalty for selling before you reach it. Second: PMI is exactly why today's strongest buyers can perform. A buyer putting down 5% or 10% on a conventional loan, or 3.5% on FHA, has already been fully underwritten on income, credit, and appraisal. Mortgage insurance is what let the lender approve that file in the first place. A financed buyer with a modest down payment isn't a weaker buyer. That buyer is the market. It's also the buyer pool Cash Flow Deals works with every week. Cash Flow Deals is a Florida real estate investor that connects homeowners directly to vetted FHA, conventional, VA, and DSCR buyers through a novation agreement: one contract, the buyer purchases the home directly from you, and Cash Flow Deals gets paid as a flat, transparent line-item fee on the settlement statement. Listing-side details run through Silver Door Realty, a licensed Florida brokerage, so the sale closes the standard way, no drawn-out open-market process.

Cash Flow Deals is a Florida real estate investor that locks in a net price for a seller's house before repairs are scoped, using a novation-based, flat-fee process arranged through its licensed FL brokerage partner, Silver Door Realty — not a traditional listing, and not a brokerage itself.

Here's what working with Cash Flow Deals looks like, step by step:

1. Share your address and mortgage details, including where you stand with PMI or FHA's MIP, with Cash Flow Deals for a free property review. Most sellers hear back within 24 hours.

2. Cash Flow Deals matches your home to a vetted, financed FHA, conventional, VA, or DSCR buyer and locks in your net price before any repairs get scoped, so PMI, appraisal gaps, and repair costs don't change what you walk away with.

3. The sale closes through the novation contract and Silver Door Realty's licensed brokerage process. Funds are available in as little as 10 business days.