Mortgage Calculator

Mortgage Calculator With PMI: What Actually Changes

PMI is a fifth line item that appears in your payment whenever your down payment is under 20%. This calculator adds it automatically — you do not have to turn it on, and you cannot accidentally leave it out of a low-down-payment scenario. The moment the down payment slider drops below 20%, a PMI row appears in the PITI breakdown and in the payment chart, priced with the same formula every lender uses:

Here is how to run a PMI scenario through the calculator above in four steps:

1. 1

   Set the home price. The page defaults to $400,000, the approximate U.S. median price. Taxes and insurance recalculate with it, so only the PMI rate needs to be checked separately.

2. 2

   Drag the down payment below 20%. At 20% or more the PMI row is $0. At 19.9% and below it fills in — which is why a 10% down payment and a 20% down payment on the same home produce very different monthly numbers even before you compare the two loan amounts.

3. 3

   Match the PMI rate to your loan estimate. The default is 0.85% of the loan per year — the same default our PMI Calculator uses. Credit-score adjustments can push the quote as low as 0.45% or above 1.5%, so type in whatever your lender quoted.

4. 4

   Read the PITI breakdown, not just the total. The breakdown splits principal and interest, taxes, insurance, HOA, and PMI — that split is what tells you how much of your payment is permanent and how much expires.

A $400,000 Mortgage Payment With PMI, Line by Line

Here is the same purchase modeled four ways with this page's defaults — a 6.5% 30-year fixed loan, flat national assumptions of 1.2% property taxes ($400/month) and $1,500 a year insurance ($125/month), and 0.85% annual PMI priced on the loan amount:

Taxes + insurance stay at $525 in every row because both are based on the home price, not the loan amount. The highlighted row is the calculator's default scenario.

Read the last column carefully, because it is where most buyers misread a PMI quote. The gap between 5% down and 20% down is $648 a month — but only $269 of it is PMI. The other $379 is the cost of financing $60,000 more. PMI expires on a schedule; that $379 does not.

Smaller homes follow the same shape. A $300,000 purchase with 10% down finances $270,000 at $1,707 in principal and interest, adds $191/month of PMI, and lands at $2,323 all-in with the same tax and insurance assumptions.

Two Reasons That Payment Is Higher — Only One of Them Goes Away

Compare the 10% down row to the 20% down row: the payment is $508 higher, and that $508 has two very different halves. Financing $40,000 more costs $253 a month in principal and interest. The PMI line adds $255 a month. Roughly half of what you feel as "the cost of a smaller down payment" is really a 30-year loan decision — and the two halves behave nothing alike.

The PMI half is also stubbornly flat. The premium is priced off the original loan amount, not today's balance: $360,000 × 0.85% = $3,060 a year, or $255 a month, in month 1 and in month 90 alike. It does not shrink as you pay the loan down, which is why the only way to reduce the PMI line is to end it early rather than to wait for it to fade.

One deliberate simplification: the calculator above holds PMI in place for the full term so the monthly figure stays stable while you compare scenarios. Real PMI stops earlier — you can request cancellation at 80% loan-to-value, and federal law forces automatic termination at 78%. The next table prices both.

When PMI Ends and What Your Payment Falls To

The month your PMI stops is not a guess — it is a point on the amortization schedule above. On a 6.5% 30-year loan it arrives when the balance reaches 80% of the purchase price, which is the threshold you can request. The table below holds the home value flat (the conservative case) and measures both the cancellation request and the automatic 78% backstop against the original $400,000 price:

Two lessons sit in that table. First, the drop is real spending money: at 10% down the $255 disappears, and the payment falls from $3,055 to $2,800 for the remaining 264 payments. Second, patience is expensive — waiting for automatic termination instead of asking for cancellation costs about $3,570 extra at 10% down, and between $2,961 (5% down) and $4,576 (15% down), because the 78% threshold trails the 80% one by more than a year.

Appreciation is the other lever, and a big one. Our PMI Calculator adds a 3% annual appreciation assumption and an appreciation slider to the same model; under that assumption PMI ends at months 49, 34, and 18 for these three down payments — a fraction of the flat-value timeline above. If you expect your market to rise, the cancellation threshold arrives years sooner.

The 10% Down Trade-Off: $40,000 in Cash vs $508 a Month

Putting 10% down instead of 20% on this home keeps $40,000 in your pocket and adds $508 to every monthly payment. Run that through the numbers above and the five-year bill is $30,470 in extra payments, of which $15,300 is PMI — it is still running at month 60 in every scenario in the table. Divide the $40,000 you kept by the $508 premium and the higher payment consumes your cash in about 79 months (6.6 years), and that ignores the return that $40,000 could earn while it waits.

That framing is the useful one: a down payment is not good or bad, it is a trade between cash you keep and a payment you carry. If you expect to move or refinance within a few years, paying PMI for 36 months to keep $40,000 liquid is usually the better deal. If you are staying put for 15 years, buying your way out of PMI up front and never paying it at all usually wins. The Rent vs Buy Calculator prices both sides of that trade — PMI, closing costs, selling costs, and what the down payment could earn invested — and reports the year buying pulls ahead.

What Rate Should You Enter in the PMI Field?

The calculator's default is 0.85% of the loan per year, which is a realistic quote for a conventional loan with a good credit score and a 10% down payment. Your own quote will land somewhere in the 0.45% to 1.5% band, driven mostly by credit score and loan-to-value. These are the values we use as quick estimates, shown on a $360,000 loan:

Estimates for planning, not a quote. Your lender prices PMI on credit score, LTV, loan type, coverage percentage, and the insurer's own grid — a 30-year fixed at 95% LTV can price quite differently from the same loan at 85% LTV. Type your loan estimate's rate into the calculator to see your own payment.

How to Avoid PMI Without Waiting Eight Years

The flat-value table above says PMI runs 8 years at 10% down. You are not required to accept that timeline — every lever below shortens or removes it, and each one can be priced in this page's calculator:

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  Put 20% down. The cleanest fix: at 20% down the PMI row is $0 from day one, and the only cost is the extra cash. Use the Affordability Calculator to see what a 20% down payment does to the price range you can actually shop in.

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  Request cancellation at 80% LTV. It takes a written request, and if your market has risen, an appraisal can measure the 80% against today's value rather than the purchase price — which can move the date forward by years.

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  Attack the balance with extra principal. At 10% down, PMI ends at month 96 on schedule. Every extra dollar of principal moves that date forward, and the $255/month premium stops at the same time — so an extra payment saves twice. Model it in the Extra Payment Calculator.

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  Trade the premium for a higher rate (lender-paid PMI). You can model this in the calculator above: set the PMI rate to 0 and raise the interest rate. At 10% down on this $400,000 home, 7.0% with no PMI gives a $2,920 payment versus $3,055 with 6.5% plus 0.85% PMI — an instant $135/month saving. But that higher rate never expires, so if you hold the loan for 30 years and never refinance, the difference is roughly $48,700 in favor of paying PMI. Lender-paid is a short-hold solution, not a permanent one.

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  Use a piggyback structure (80/10/10). A first mortgage at 80% LTV plus a 10% second mortgage and 10% down removes PMI entirely, because the first loan never exceeds 80% LTV. The trade-off is a second lien with its own rate, and the payment you see above covers the first mortgage only — price the second loan separately through your lender.

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  Compare an FHA loan honestly. FHA loans carry MIP rather than PMI: 1.75% up front plus an annual premium in the 0.50%–0.55% range that, below 10% down, lasts the life of the loan. To see that payment here, put the annual MIP rate in the PMI field — and read FHA vs. conventional before you assume the lower down payment is the cheaper route.

Use These Numbers Before You Write an Offer

The PMI line is the one cost in a mortgage payment that both expires and can be removed early — which makes it the easiest expense to plan around, once you know the date it ends. The calculator above gives you the monthly amount; the pages below give you the deadline.

All figures on this page come from this calculator's own model: a $400,000 home, 6.5% 30-year fixed loan, flat national assumptions of 1.2% property taxes and $1,500 a year insurance, and a 0.85% annual PMI rate. State-level rates and premiums — Tax Foundation 2024 and NAIC 2022 — are on our state pages. Change any input above to see your own numbers.