Question about PMI and refinancing

[Anonymous]

borrowers don't get to pick the appraiser-- lenders do. Even if you have an appraisal in hand the lender won't use it.

[Anonymous]

If you paid upfront PMI, it may transfer. We paid a ~$2,000 lump sum on our initial purchase and didn't have to worry about it on refinance. Fortunately the best rate we found was with our same original lender (although we used a different broker) and I think this made a difference. Given that the value of homes in our area has increased, we may have ended up with 20% equity anyway but doing it this way eliminated a lot of stress. In the end, I'm so glad we went with the upfront option 3 years ago!

[Anonymous]

The new mortgage loan laws have created a new appraisal process where the bank and appraiser don't interact or know the other. We closed our refi last week and ran in to lots of new laws we didn't when we refinanced 3 years ago. In our case the appraiser came out for a formal assessment but ultimately looked at comps to make the decision and chose to ignore the 3 higher comps in our neighborhood to go with a low comp in a completely different area (not walking distance to the metro, a HUGE factor) because it was the most recent sale and we got a low ball appraisal at $30k less than our appraisal 3 years ago when the market was worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The new mortgage loan laws have created a new appraisal process where the bank and appraiser don't interact or know the other. We closed our refi last week and ran in to lots of new laws we didn't when we refinanced 3 years ago. In our case the appraiser came out for a formal assessment but ultimately looked at comps to make the decision and chose to ignore the 3 higher comps in our neighborhood to go with a low comp in a completely different area (not walking distance to the metro, a HUGE factor) because it was the most recent sale and we got a low ball appraisal at $30k less than our appraisal 3 years ago when the market was worse.

What happens in this situation? My husband and I are planning to put additional money down in order to get out of paying PMI, but I really don't want to cut into our savings more than needed. We've been using the Zillow estimate for approximating the value; would an appraisal come in much below this?