Why Do I Pay Pmi With My Mortgage Payment?

Payment Mortgage Insurance is required by the lender for high Loan to Value mortgages.   Once you have sufficient equity, you can cancel the PMI.

Likely your loan to value (LTV) is over 80% of the house value.  In other words your loan is $180k and the house was valued at $200k at the time of the loan (180/200 = 90%).  Depending on what type of PMI you have you can get it canceled provided you can prove the home is worth at least $225k (in the example above).  The reason $225k is the magic number in the above example is that is the amount where the $180k balance would be 80% or less of the value of the home.  Other things apply as well...