We own a Single Family home as an investment property. The mortgage on this property is currently held by Citimortgage. We purchased the home two years ago for $200, 000 and took a loan for $180, 000. On July 7th of 2009, we sent a principal curtailment of $70, 000 and also a check for $500 to have the loan re-amortized. Along with the check, we sent a letter asking for the PMI to be removed, since our loan to value would have automatically reduced dramatically.

We received a letter from CitiMortgage stating that an appraisal is required to remove the PMI off of our loan. Well, we accepted that and paid $385 for an appraisal. The appraisal came back lower, as expected in this market, to $185, 000. We are being told that the PMI can’t be removed since the home value depreciated. This seems like a ludicrous argument to us. Our current appraised value is $185, 000 (appraised by your bank recently) and our loan amount is $110, 000, which means our loan to value is under 60%. We are utterly confused why we cannot get the PMI removed considering the significant reduction in loan to value.

p.s. This loan was originally from ABN AMRO.

We have contacted my local elected official to look into this. But there has been no progress so far. They have filed a complaint with "Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of National Banks". The status has been "You case is being reviewed" for the past 3 months.