Many homeowners don't realize they have private mortgage insurance (PMI). But if you put less than 20 percent down, you are paying it each and every month in order to protect your lender against the possibility that you might default on your loan.

Even if you're aware of your PMI, and couldn't have purchased your house without it, you probably hate the fact that hundreds of dollars are added to your monthly payment for the lender's benefit, not yours. Especially when you are among the 95 percent or so of borrowers who have never missed a payment and never will.

Nearly 750,000 homebuyers obtained loans requiring PMI in 2015 alone, mostly first-time buyers earning less than $75,000 a year. Under the law, PMI must be dropped when your loan balance reaches 78 percent of your home's original value. But did you know that there are other circumstances in which PMI can be canceled, but only at your request?

Enter the PMI Terminator, a detailed analysis describing eight possible scenarios under which you can jettison PMI coverage early -- without refinancing and without waiting for the loan balance to reach that all-important 78 percent level.

"For PMI removal, the question is not if, but when," says David Ginsburg of Loantech, the Gaithersburg, Maryland, mortgage audit company that created the Terminator. "There are a lot of different scenarios, but they are somewhat complicated."

The PMI Terminator is an eight-page personalized report based on each homeowner's particular situation. The report costs $99, but "the savings can be significant," Ginsburg says. PMI monthly payments can range from $50 per month to more than $400, so canceling just two years early can result in some real money.

Note: PMI should not be confused with a mortgage insurance premium (MIP). PMI is placed on conventional mortgages, whereas MIP is paid on loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

The PMI Terminator is based on loan and property information supplied by the owner. To complete a report, LoanTech needs to know the property's original value, the original loan amount, interest rate, loan term and the date of your first payment. Once those variables are in hand, the program crunches the numbers and spits out the options.

Here are some of the possibilities for dumping PMI:

-- If your loan is owned or held by Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage company that purchases loans on the secondary market from primary lenders, you can ask the lender to delete PMI when your loan balance drops to 80 percent of the property's original value, rather than 78 percent.

Because Fannie's rule is based on a home's original, not current, value, you won't need a new appraisal. And if you prepaid any of the principal before it was due, those amounts are considered as part of the loan balance. Consequently, if you were to make a sizable prepayment to reach the 80 percent threshold, you can petition earlier for cancellation.

Give the Terminator the information it needs, and it will tell you to the month and day when you can solicit your lender under this and all other scenarios.

-- The rule is the same at loans owned or held by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae's chief competitor and the other government-sponsored secondary market institution. But with Freddie, loan prepayments are not counted against the principal.

-- Your lender must cancel PMI by the midpoint of the loan -- that is, 15 years for a 30-year mortgage -- regardless of whether the 78 percent threshold has been reached.

-- If you make substantial improvements that have increased the value of a house that serves as collateral for a Fannie Mae loan, you can request cancellation when the loan-to-value ratio (LTV) drops to 75 percent or below of present value. Here, though, you'll need an appraisal.

-- With a Freddie Mac loan, if you made such improvements, you can call for cancellation when the LTV is 80 or below. Again, a new appraisal is required.

-- You can't ask for cancellation until the loan is at least 24 months old. But between 24 and 72 months, you can ask to cancel if the LTV doesn't exceed 75 percent of current value. Ditto for loans older than 72 months in which the LTV doesn't exceed 80 percent of current value.

The wheels are in motion for homebuyers to obtain a little larger mortgage at a little lower interest rate next year.

That is, it is now possible for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to boost the limit on loans they can purchase or securitize. The exact amount is anybody's guess right now, as is when it would happen, exactly. But one calculation puts the new ceiling at $422,000 for 2017 -- a bump of $5,000.

Over the last eight years or so, the two government-sponsored enterprises' regulator and conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, has put the kibosh on hikes in the so-called conforming loan limit because of complaints that doing so would crowd out private investors in home loans. But right now, there is little to no private investment in the mortgage market. And with many would-be borrowers facing big-time affordability issues, it is believed that the FHFA may change its mind.

Under the FHFA's rule, Fannie and Freddie cannot raise their loan limit -- now $417,000 in most places, but higher in about 30 high-cost markets -- until indices show that housing prices have reached the level they were at prior to the Great Recession.

In the second quarter, all three of the agency's housing price measures hit the high-water mark set in the third quarter of 2007. The loan limit hasn't seen an increase since 2006.

This is important because the loans touched by Fannie and Freddie are often one-eighth to one-quarter percent less expensive than other loans. And with the Fed poised to kick interest rates a tad higher, an increase in the Fannie-Freddie limit looms even more significant.

Fannie and Freddie don't originate mortgages. Rather, they buy them from lenders on the secondary market and wrap them into securities for sale to investors worldwide.

Because of their implicit government guarantee that they will be paid whether borrowers make their payments or not -- and almost all do -- investors in Fannie's and Freddie's bonds are willing to take a slightly smaller yield. In other words, knowing your investment is safe is worth a few less shekels.

If the ceiling is raised, it will mean homebuyers will be able to borrow more money at a lower rate. Again, how much more, and at what rate, remains to be seen -- if there is indeed a change at all.

Typically, the move, if there is one, is announced over the Thanksgiving weekend. Stay tuned.

To help mortgage lenders more accurately identify and potentially reward responsible credit behavior, credit reports now include so-called "trended data," which is up to the last two years of your debt repayment and credit balance histories.

Traditionally, mortgage lenders had access to a would-be borrower's outstanding credit balances, how he or she used credit and the overall availability of that credit. In other words, how much credit did your creditors extend to you, what percentage did you use, and did you make on-time payments?

While certainly helpful in assessing your ability to make mortgage payments, that information did not provide details on whether payments serviced all or part of your debt, and it did not show the pattern in which you used your credit.

Now, updated credit reports will provide a more comprehensive view of a borrower's debt-management practices, such as whether you paid off your credit card debt every month or whether you made just the minimum payment and incurred interest penalties.

Research by Fannie Mae found that, all else being equal, those who paid in full every month were 60 percent less likely to become delinquent on a mortgage than those who made only the minimum monthly payment.

If you think housing prices here are too high, wait until you get a load of what's going on in other countries.

In China, house prices were up nearly 21 percent in the second quarter, according to the Global Property Report. Prices in New Zealand rose by only half that much, but that's still an incredible 10 percent.

Other high-flyers include Romania, Germany and Turkey, all three around the 10-percent mark.

But all is not so well everywhere. Values fell 12.5 percent in Russia and 11 percent in Egypt, Hong Kong, Mongolia and Montenegro.

It's a rocky world out there. Prices rose in 30 out of the 46 housing markets that have published statistics so far, the report said. But only 27 are showing market momentum in which prices are rising faster than they were at the same time a year ago.

Worthy of note: Europe's house-price boom continues unabated. Six of the 10 strongest housing markets in the global survey were in Europe. Prices rose in 17 of the 22 European housing markets for which figures were available.

When Vince Barnaba discovered water had flooded his vacation apartment in Ocean City, Maryland, this spring, he did what any homeowner would have done: He had his plumber shut off the water to his unit. Then he called his insurance company to file a claim.

But the insurer said he should file a claim with the company that insured the building, which has a central water supply. So he did. And when the second insurer refused to cover the damages because the refrigerator water line had been leaking for more than 14 days -- even though he hadn't visited the place in the previous six months -- Barnaba was befuddled. Neither company wanted to cover his damages, which were substantial.

The 80-year-old Barnaba was thinking about hiring a lawyer to help him with his predicament when someone suggested he hire a public adjuster: an insurance professional who works on behalf of the insured rather than the insurance company.

Fast-forward a few months, and after some dickering back and forth between his adjuster and the two insurers, Barnaba is now in receipt of checks totaling nearly $54,000.

Moreover, his adjuster has put the insurers on notice that he expects them to compensate his client because he was unable to use his apartment this summer -- they had dragged their feet so long that the repairs didn't start until mid-August.

"I'm overjoyed; we were getting nothing," says Barnaba. "If I didn't have this guy, I wouldn't have been able to get anything. I was lost; I didn't have the energy to fight them."

The public adjuster's cut: 10 percent. And even that surprised Barnaba. "It has been worth every dollar," he says. "I thought I was going to have to pay 30 percent, and I would have been happy to pay that."

Like Barnaba, most people don't know public adjusters even exist. But they do, and despite being bad-mouthed by the insurance companies, they do good work.

"They don't like us," says Bob Rodriguez of the Reliable Adjustment Co. in Cinnaminson, New Jersey. "Doesn't that tell you something?"

Part lawyer and part accountant, public adjusters protect you from being taken advantage of, whether by mistake or intentionally.

In Barnaba's case, for example, the 14-day clause cited by his insurer reads that the insured is required to mitigate damages within two weeks after discovering a problem, not, as the insurance company's adjuster said, that the insured has two weeks once the leak starts. That's a big difference, especially in a vacation home that gets limited use.

Rodriguez says he almost always extracts "a better settlement" than what's initially offered by an insurer.

Like realty agents who work solely for buyers -- so-called buyer brokers -- public adjusters assist homeowners in settling property insurance claims. They work only for the insured, never for the insurance company, to make sure you receive all the benefits provided for in your policy.

The insurance company's adjuster is supposed to be fair, and they usually are. But they work for the company, and their job is to pay out as little as possible under the terms of your policy.

Public adjusters come in handy in the immediate aftermath of a loss, no matter how devastating and stressful. They are able to present your claim and back it up in order to obtain the most favorable outcome.

Not only are they familiar with the insurance business and its customs and practices, these experts understand a policy's language -- verbiage that seems like gibberish to the layman. Many public adjusters are also trained to identify covered damage and estimate appropriate repair or replacement costs.

Like any professional, there are good public adjusters and not-so-good ones, so you should do your homework before hiring one. In particular, beware of contractors who hold themselves out as public adjusters.

Find out how long he or she has been in business. Obtain references and check them out. You'll definitely want to talk to previous clients to find out how they fared. Make sure the adjuster is licensed in your state by calling the state insurance office. All but seven states currently require licenses. Also, find out if your state limits what public adjusters can charge. Texas, for example, limits their fees to 10 percent of the settlement claim.

You can find an adjuster at the National Association of Public Insurance Adjusters' website, napia.com, under the "Find an Adjuster" tab.