You are probably required by your mortgage lender to carry homeowners insurance, but these are separate purchases. Mortgage requirements for home insurance vary depending on the location, building codes, types of homes, etc. The main issue for a mortgage lender is making sure that your homeowners insurance covers everything that could harm your (and their) assets. In most cases, someone with a financial stake in your home – like the homeowner with the mortgage or the owner with a home equity loan – will want to see that home insured. Mortgage homeowners insurance requirements may differ depending on lender and the home location, but nearly all lenders will require your home to be insured at 100% of the replacement value.
If you have less than 20% down, then it is very possible your lender will require that you pay your homeowners insurance via escrow. Like your PMI, if you did not make a 20 % down payment or more for the house, chances are good your lender will require you to pay escrow. If a lender requires that you pay home insurance and taxes via a HPML escrow account, this will be listed in your Payment Schedule on your Rule Z documents.
While homeowners insurance is never actually included with the mortgage, it may be added to the mortgage payments via an escrow account established by the lender. An escrow account allows you to spread two big payments out over 12 months, and can help you avoid surprise increases in your insurance or taxes. An escrow account allows you to spread out your insurance and tax payments, rather than paying each one in one big payment each year.
When you have an escrow account, you make one payment, typically each month, that includes both your loan payment and the escrow, explained the FTC. The lender or loan servicer puts these charges into the escrow account, which is essentially a savings account your mortgage servicer handles. When you make a mortgage payment, part of the mortgage payment is put into the escrow account to cover homeowner insurance and property taxes (and mortgage insurance, if required by the lender).
If you are required to pay mortgage insurance, it will be included in the total monthly payment that you pay your lender, in closing costs, or in both. Private mortgage insurance can cost you hundreds of dollars per month in premium payments in order to protect your lender, which is why private mortgage insurance is generally not the preferred way of financing your home. Mortgage insurance costs borrowers money, but allows them to be homeowners faster, by mitigating the risks for financial institutions to make mortgages to people with smaller down payments. If at some point during your years, you eventually end up taking out a second mortgage for your house, you are probably going to be facing less strict requirements on homeowner insurance.
Your new lender might have different requirements for coverage than your former one, meaning that you might have to add more coverage to your current homeowners insurance. Depending on where you live, your lender might also ask that you buy flood insurance or earthquake insurance. For example, if you paid $300,000 for a house with a $60,000 down payment, your lender might require you to carry just $240,000 worth of insurance.
Once your homeowners policy is established, it is not likely that your lender will request any changes in policy amounts, unless you add square footage or make a large renovation that increases your homes repair or reconstruction costs. If you have taken out a mortgage, your lender will require that you purchase a policy and keep coverage through when you repay your loan. Depending on the mortgage lender and the terms of the loan, you might be required to buy private mortgage insurance, too.
Your mortgage lender might require at least homeowners insurance coverage before it will give you the loan, since this is the one part of a homeowners insurance policy directly related to the structure of your house itself. To qualify for a mortgage for a new home, you must have some hazard insurance included with your homeowners insurance policy. This does not mean your homeowners insurance policy is automatically included with the mortgage–you need to buy that coverage separately and submit the proof of it before closing on the house. If you are getting a loan from the Federal Housing Administration to buy your house, you need one extra kind of coverage.
With a FHA mortgage, you will also pay a monthly mortgage insurance premium (MIP) between 0.45 percent and 1.05 percent of your loan amount, depending on your down payment and the length of the loan. Like with FHA loans, you can roll this upfront expense into the mortgage rather than paying for it out-of-pocket, but doing so increases both the amount you borrow and the total amount you pay. Requirement is the reason that mortgage companies will take payments towards your insurance premiums as part of your monthly mortgage payment, and they will cover those premiums for you once they are due.
If you made a 20% down payment or more, you usually can choose whether you want to pay for insurance through your mortgage. If you are taking out a home loan with a down payment less than 20 percent, most lenders will require you to pay your homeowners insurance through one of those accounts – which you pay into as part of your mortgage payments. Collecting your insurance payments and taxes through the escrow account protects your lender against uninsured losses from taxes and liens, and the PMI protects the lender in case you ever default on your mortgage. Better Mortgage Corporation provides mortgages; Better Real Estate, LLC provides real estate services; Better Cover, LLC provides homeowners insurance policies; and Better Settlement Services provides title insurance services.