We Wait

Summary

My wife and I are trying to find out if we can remove PMI when we get to 80% LTV.  The HPA says that we can request that, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage's website also says that we can, but a customer service representative says that we need to get to 78%.  I sent a fax to the Resolution Department to see what the truth is.  In the meantime, I get a form letter saying 78% LTV.  This is mid-February, 2012.

Waiting

I'm not too pushy with businesses or other people, so my natural reaction is to wait and allow Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (WFHM) to respond to my fax inquiry sent on February 10, 2012.  We did not get an answer back after a month.  We decide to make a curtailment to 80% and then initiate borrower-requested PMI cancellation per the Homeowners Protection Act (HPA) of 1998. 

On April 30, 2012, we make an extra payment to get our LTV to just under 80%.  Once I verified that the payment has posted and the LTV was under 80%, I drafted a second fax for Resolutions.  It was short and to the point, saying:

We recently made a bulk principal payment on our home loan to reduce our loan to under 80% LTV.  We therefore request cancellation of PMI, per the Homeowners Protection Act.  We meet the criteria under this Act, and on your Web site, for PMI cancellation:

• Single family, owner-occupied residence
• Loan originated after July 29, 1999
• LTV under 80%, based on a recent appraisal of our home conducted less than six months ago for our refinancing

Please remove PMI and re-issue an amended bill for our June mortgage payment.  If you have any questions or need clarification, please feel free to contact me at (xxx)xxx-xxxx or x@x.com.

My wife helped write that.  It seems pretty clear and is absolutely a request to cancel PMI.  We should have this problem licked, right?  We've met the requirements needed by law: 80% LTV, single family owner-occupied, current payments, evidence of a type established in advance that the value of the property has not declined.

Well, that last requirement could be a grey area.  The type was not established in advance (as far as I can tell), and in fact the PMI disclosure says that this requirement is "if requested."  At this point, there hasn't been a request.  In fact, WFHM hasn't even acknowledged that there is an option to request PMI deletion at 80% LTV.

We wrote the letter on May 8, 2012. However, I don't know that it was ever received by WFHM.  So we faxed it again on May 23, 2012.  We sent it one more time on May 24, 2012 because we weren't sure if the fax machine worked on May 23.

But, it looks like we've complied with the HPA.  Will Wells Fargo Home Mortgage comply with the law?

Summary so Far (5/24/12)

1. We were told at loan origination that we could cancel PMI when we reached 80% LTV
2. We have enough money to pay our loan to 80% LTV
3. I found a statement on the Wells Fargo Home Mortgage website that stated we could request cancellation of PMI when we reached 80% LTV
4. I called a customer service rep to confirm, but was told we needed to get to either 78% LTV or 75% LTV with appraisal (???).  I was told to fax Resolutions to ask about the 80% requirement.
5. I researched the HPA and verified that I could request PMI cancellation at 80% LTV.  I also found that HPA requires evidence of a type established in advance that property value has not declined.  Not only was the evidence type not established in the PMI disclosure, but the requirement to provide evidence was made optional.
6. I prepared a fax that included a printout of the Wells Fargo Home Mortgage website where they acknowledge that a borrow can request cancellation of PMI at 80% LTV.
7. I received a form letter telling us that we could remove PMI at 78% LTV (per HPA) or 75% LTV with structural improvements and an appraisal (per investor requirements).  It neglected to mention the 80% borrower-initiated cancellation option allowed by the HPA.  Must have been an oversight...
8. We made a principal curtailment to 80% LTV on 4/30/12
9. We wrote a letter requesting PMI deletion and faxed on 5/8/12.
10. No response after two weeks, so we faxed another request to delete PMI on 5/23/12 and a third request on 5/24/12.