Is it possible to refinance with less than 20% equity?

[Anonymous]

we refinanced in the fall. no appraisal required, but we bought our house less than 2 years ago. even with the appreciation in the value of our house, we'd we well below the 20% equity threshold. the mortgage banker we used is awesome.

http://gofirsthome.com/alex_jaffe

[Anonymous]

I just refi'd in August with FHA at 4.5% equity (i think). The rate was very good-4.5% fixed 30 year. We will have to MI at $120/mo for 3 yrs, then it will go away. Not happy about the MI, but the refi saves me about $450 a month.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We refinanced last summer and were told we didn't need 20% equity. Our house had actually appreciated some since we bought it in 2008 (as a foreclosure) and we were feeling fairly confident that it would appraise high enough to get the 20% anyway, but in the end an appraisal wasn't even required. It's my understanding that we qualified for some kind of new Obama mortgage program but I don't know what it was called. We had pre-paid our PMI when we bought initially and the certificate carried over to the re-fi.

Its probably the HARP program - call your lender and ask about it . They have an appraised value for some properties in their computer and you may be able to refi using that value instead of doing the whole thing from start to finish. It matters who holds the loan.