When you have paid a down payment that is less than 20% of the purchase price of the home, you will have to pay private mortgage insurance. This is a requirement of the law that protects lenders from defaulting borrowers. You will be classified as a high-risk borrower if you have a poor credit rating or even if you have been defaulting from previous borrowers. Since you do not have the 20% equity on your home, you are a high-risk borrower and you require this policy to cover your lender if you are not able to pay your money to the bank. This amount is calculated annually and the amount divided by 12 for you to get the monthly value of the insurance. Your amortization schedule should tell you for how long you will be paying this mortgage insurance and for how long you will be paying the whole loan.
You can avoid this mortgage insurance very easily, but first you will need information from your lender of how it can be avoided with ease. You will need to command some respect from the lender, so you have to have a good credit rating to start with. Those who do not have a good credit rating may not be able to get much from this. Discuss the possibilities of getting a second mortgage on 80% of the value of the home. Usually an 80% loan will not require you to get any mortgage insurance. When you are not able to pay 20%, a percentage of this can be paid for you by the lender from the second mortgage. This will easily help you to clear the 20% down payment at which point you will be able to remove mortgage insurance.You will need a bank statement and proof of income among other documents that the lender will ask for.
The other option of avoiding mortgage insurance is asking the lender to increase your interest payments on the whole mortgage by a certain amount. This will mean that you will not need to pay mortgage insurance but instead you will pay monthly mortgage payments at higher rates than you expect. While this may not reduce the amount you pay per month very much, you will have the advantage of never paying PMI. It also means that you will pay off very less money to the lender compared to those who pay PMI on their home loans.