Clean it up like you would for a showing. The reviewer is valuing the property, not your housekeeping, but reviewers are human, so a show-ready home never hurts. Tidy the place, handle obvious deferred maintenance, and make sure the reviewer can access everything. Then put your energy into the part that actually decides the outcome: which removal path you are on, because there are two, and they use different values. - The federal path runs on your original value. Under the Homeowners Protection Act, you can request cancellation when your balance reaches 80 percent of the value at purchase (the lesser of the price or the appraisal back then), and PMI terminates automatically once the balance is scheduled to hit 78 percent, as long as you are current. Appreciation does not count on this path at all, and because early payments are mostly interest, the automatic trigger takes a long time to arrive on its own. - The current-value path is where your BPO or new appraisal comes in. Fannie Mae's servicing rules let you request removal based on today's value, with seasoning: 75 percent loan-to-value or lower when the loan is two to five years old, and 80 percent or lower once it is past five years. Under two years, a new value only counts when the equity gain came from documented property improvements. A clean payment history is required either way. So if your area has seen real price growth, the current-value request is the move, since the automatic trigger ignores appreciation entirely. Confirm your servicer's process, make sure you are past the seasoning that applies to you, then order the valuation.