As if buying a house for the first time wasn't scary enough, try adding on mortgage protection insurance.

Mortgage protection insurance is added to the cost of a mortgage when the buyer has less than 20 percent to put down on the purchase.Traditionally, the insurance was dropped once the buyer had reached the 20 percent threshold in his or her payments. That isn't the case anymore.In 2013, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Mortgagee Letter revised the Federal Housing Authority policies regarding the cancellation of this insurance. For an FHA loan, the insurance is known as the mortgage insurance premium.Before this change, the MIP could be canceled once the loan-to-value ratio reached 78 percent. FHA borrowers who put down less than 10 percent will automatically trigger the lifetime MIP.Now, the mortgage insurance is held for the life of the loan no matter how much is owed or how much the house has appreciated.The change was in response to the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession in December 2007.The practice also applies to conventional loans and is called private mortgage insurance. According to the Federal Housing Administration, the key word is private, because these loans do not have any government insurance or backing."In most FHA programs, an upfront mortgage insurance premiumis collected at loan closing; and an annual mortgage insurance premiumis collected in monthly installments," the FHA website explained.Cass Chies, broker and owner of ReMax Diamond 1st in Palmerton, said the only way for a buyer to get rid of the lifetime PMI is to refinance his or her house loan."However, in order to have the PMI removed, the homeowner would need to make sure that there is 20 percent or more equity," she said. "What would have a huge impact would be removing the lifetime PMI that's what (the federal government) should be looking into eliminating," said.A reduction in the mortgage insurance premium was set to go into effect on Jan. 27, but was halted by President Donald Trump just hours after his inauguration."I don't feel it's going to impact buyers in our area," Chies said.Lenders told her the greatest impact in this area was that they had to go back to buyers whose loans would be affected by the halt and re-disclose the terms of the loan in order to close.The National Association of Realtors had a stronger opinion."Without the premium reduction, we estimate that roughly 750,000 to 850,000 homebuyers will face higher costs and between 30,000 and 40,000 would-be buyers will be prevented from entering the market," said NAR President William Brown. "By cutting annual premiums from 0.85 percent to 0.60 percent, an FHA-insured mortgage becomes a more viable and affordable option for these buyers."