Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Refinance Mortgage Insurance

All fees and charges to your loan have to be disclosed to you and any purchase of the loan takes subject to your agreement with the original lender. Please fax me at 714 363 0229 all of your loan documents and I will provide you with free consultation fee. Our firm handles cases thorughout California.

Re: Refinance Mortgage Insurance

A lender may sometimes require a borrower on a loan secured by real estate to maintain private mortgage insurance (PMI). The PMI premiums are ordinarily paid by the borrower to the insurer through an impound account handled by the lender. Nonpayment of the premiums is an event of default and a ground for loan acceleration.

The law restricts the right of a lender or loan servicer to charge or collect future PMI premiums under certain conditions, including the right of the borrower to cancel the insurance when the loan balance-to-equity ratio decreases to 75% or below. The lender is required to make certain timely notifications to the borrower re the PMI account and obligations.

Disputes over PMI often arise if the lender requires the insurance in situations not authorized by law, mishandles the impound account, or fails to notify the borrower of his cancellation rights. In some situations the borrower may recover treble damages and attorney fees and costs.

Much of the applicable law is codified in the Civil Code, sections 2954 through 2955, which you can consult at a library or on line.

In your situation, one of several things may have occurred. The lender may have mistakenly failed to include the PMI payment in your estimate. The new holder may be mistakenly charging for PMI. Or, some facts may have triggered the right to require PMI, such as negative amortization, a downward reassessment of the equity, or ??????

A starting point would be to read all the papers you signed and all the disclosures you received very carefully, looking for references to PMI. Then, armed with your findings, call the lender and the current holder or servicing agent.

If this fails to solve the problem, you may want to retain an attorney especially if your case may fall into the treble damages category.

Re: Refinance Mortgage Insurance

They may not charge any mortgage insurance that you did not agree to. Tell the new company to either show you where you signed accepting mortgage insurance, or to collect it from whoever sold them the loan.

If you would like me to review the original loan docs, fax them to me at 925-397-3044.