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If you don't mind sharing, how much did you save for a downpayment & closing costs for your new home? Or how much are you trying to save? I know we are all in different towns/cities and it's hard to compare, but I'm very interested in this topic since DH and I are trying hard to save ourselves!
**EDITED to note that I'm asking for your own personal experience if you don't mind sharing! Again, I understand we are all in different areas and can take advantage of different programs, but I want to know what YOU did! :)
Nothing for our first house. We had a 'total acquisition' mortgage...zero down,closing costs only.
Second house, we used the profit from the sale of first home as down payment....approx. $60,000.
It all depends on what type of loan you are getting, if you do an FHA then you only need 3.5% down, but if you do a conventional loan then you need 20%. Also, closing costs very greatly depending on the price of the house and if you are getting any help from the seller. If I were you, I would take the price at the top of your budget, figure out your numbers, and then work towards that. That way, you know for sure you have the money ready to go
It all depends on what type of loan you are getting, if you do an FHA then you only need 3.5% down, but if you do a conventional loan then you need 20%. Also, closing costs very greatly depending on the price of the house and if you are getting any help from the seller. If I were you, I would take the price at the top of your budget, figure out your numbers, and then work towards that. That way, you know for sure you have the money ready to go
Nothing. My parents are gifting me the money for the downpayment.
But, if we were saving for the downpayment, we would probably only save 5% of the home value so we wouldn't have to wait for too long to get the house.
we recieved a goverment va loan, which covers the down payment... so nothing!
My SO is a mortgage lender, so I'm sure he would tell you to talk with a mortgage lender to see what kind of programs are out there right now and see the different options you have for getting a home. That way you have a real idea of what kind of downpayment you need.
With the market the way it is today, you can probably get some (if not all) of your closing costs covered by the seller. Also, to correct the previous poster, you can get a conventional loan if your downpayment is below 20%, you just have to pay Private Mortgage Insurance, which can be a nice chunk of change. If you have 10% equity (downpayment or otherwise) toward your home, you may be able to qualify for a Home Equity Line of Credit that can pay the other 10% and get you out of your PMI. The HELOC payment is usually a LOT less than PMI would be per month. But not all banks have that kind of program.
We put down 20% to avoid PMI - some of which was gifted from parents, some was savings, and a small bit was a loan from 401k. 20% equated to just over $50k.
Whatever amount you determine is a good amount for you, just make sure you have a few thousand saved for “wiggle room”, as unexpected expenses seemed to pop up right before signing for most people I know who bought recently – either with closing costs/moving costs/etc.
Keep in mind if you dont put 20% down you have to pay PMI and escrow your prop tax & home owners ins.
My 1st home my dad paid cash for me and I made payments to him. So on my 2nd (current house) I had quite a bit of money from house #1. I would never buy a house without having 20% but thats just me.
Also look into a 15 year loan you will be AMAZED on how much intrest you can save even if it means you need to buy a smaller house 1st. I am thinking about refinancing to a 15 year and will be saving about 90k in intrest!
I heard that the cost of PMI has greatly increased just in the last 6 months. We currently pay about $100 a month for PMI since we only put down 10% for our conventional loan. Hopefully in a couple years we can get that off of there with an appraisal.
We had saved about 15% and put down about 10%. We were lucky that the sellers paid closing costs so we were able to use that money for all the repairs, etc we wanted to work on.
We put down 5% about. We did FHA so we only needed 3.5%. I actually had about 10% in the bank + we got the 8k from the government which would've been about another 4% so we could've done like 15% but we decided to keep some money in the bank as an emergency fund in case either of us should lose our jobs and we also got some furniture for this house.
Our goal is to be able to put about $100,000 toward down payment for a new home. We want to put down at least 20%, and part of that money may be used toward immediate remodeling of the home, depending on what we end up buying. So, it could end up being more like 80k down payment, 20k in a room remodel.
@mishelleez: We had looked into a 15 year loan, but the mortgage lender actually recommended against it. She suggested we get a 30 year loan and pay it like a 15 year, because we can always pay more than our payment, but never less (so if we had the 15 year loan and fell on hard times, we could be in trouble).
I calculated how long it would take us to pay off the 30 year loans making the payment of the 15 year loan (the interest rate was slightly higher on the 30 year) and it was only a few extra years and a few extra thousand dollars. So, we did the 30 year, but are paying extra each month.
As for the original question, I put 20% down on my first townhouse, using money gifted from my grandparents. I was then able to use the money from that sale to put 20% down on our house. I know I got lucky with the grandparent gift, but it was still important to me to put as much down as possible (while also having money saved for emergencies).
@Tulip61110:We have the same goal! My only regret is that we didn't get started earlier, saving takes time!
Others: I don't even thing FHA is an option in NYC. Most buildings are condo and require minimum 20% down in addition to being 'voted' in.
We saved 18% of the home purchase price. Since we were shy of the 20% but had great credit scores, we ended up putting down 10% and taking the remainder of that money to remodel our house. If you are looking for a mortgage through a bank and not a mortgage broker, you are usually required to put down at least 10% since a bank would not be able to get the PMI insurance with anything less than 10%.
I feel so in the minority on this subject bc we built our home and it is an entirely different loan than the above options. We did not put anything down, but they put the property value of our land we own towards the loan. The money we had saved up we make extra payments and pay extra each month.
A big fat 0! first time home buyers program in our community = no down payment and seller pays closing costs. No PMI payments through this program either.
We live in Boston and bought a 2bdrm condo last year. We put down 15% (this amount was required per new Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac guidelines...every community is different for condo requirements). FHA loan was not an option with the area/type of property we wanted. With closing costs, that amounted to about 70K (gulp). My parents loaned us 40K (they have done the same with all siblings) and we had 30K of our own. The good news is is that this will probably be the most expensive home we'll ever own, so won't need to stress again about saving up for another downpayment.
We got our down payment from my FIL and then paid half of the closing costs
I put 20% down on my first and second apartments, and we're planning to put 20% down on a home too. My husband and I just aren't comfortable buying unless we have enough money saved up to have a significant amount of equity in our home. And in NYC you may not be able to get a mortgage without putting at least 15-20% down - especially for a co-op. Banks are being much stricter these days, and when I sold my co-op a few months back the buyer was told that she needed to put at least 15% down to get a mortgage.
We're in the same boat, trying to figure out how to accomplish buying a house. A lot of my friends have recently purchased homes by going the FHA route (3.5% down). I think they split the closing costs with the seller.
I'm on a save, save, save gameplan so hopefully we can scrape together a 20% downpayment in the next year and a half. My husband has some savings of his own but almost all of my savings is tied up in my retirement fund. I feel a little behind since we make less than most of my friends and don't have much in the way of family support like they did. But we're more comfortable than his friends, so he feels ahead of the curve.
Buying in Southern California is probably a different experience than most of the recent of the country. We watch House Hunters regularly and can't believe what people can buy with so little money.
We currently live in a condo, hubs bought it after 2 years of dating and we moved in together. We've been there almost 5 years and we are crawling the walls to get out. We want 5-10% down for the next place because we can already tell, even with a few renovations we have done, we are not going to make much, if any profit in our area/situation. We paid for our own wedding so I know savings is possible but it seems to be so slow when we want out so badly.
@BnR09:Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that! :( I hope things turn around for you and hopefully you can at least break even on your condo!
It totalled about 20K, 8K of that was from a Roth I had been pitching into, the rest we saved up in a hurry. We needed 3.5% for FHA loan.
We will be putting down around 20% on our first home. We're planning on saving around $40,000 for down payment, closing costs and new furniture.
Right now we have 20% and some extra for an emergency. Then when we sell our current place we will have a few thousand for our e-fund. Ideally I want 20%, a fund to cover 6-9 months worth of living expenses in case one of us loses our jobs and then another e-fund if something were to happen to the house or car (we have 1- so no back up). Call me crazy ;)
We put down 3% and closing costs were paid for by the loan we have as long as we live there for 10 years (been there 2 so far). I can tell you that we have been putting $50 extra/month on the principal and it has taken currently 5 years off the loan and $30k off what we will pay overall. If you can put any extra money down do it!
We did 5%, that's the minimum in Canada. We had some more saved, but we wanted to be able to actually have appliances and furniture, so we saved some for that :P
@Soon2beeMrsM: Wow that's amazing that just an extra $50/month could make such a big difference!! I know it's always good to pay more whenever you can, but had no idea how much different even "small" sums could make!
@pendola: Nope, we are the same way! We have 2 E-Funds, one that is small for minor things like cars and the other is a year worth of all expenses like you, if one should lose their job. We are big savers and now save into IRA's and Long term CD's. Not crazy, just smart!
@gabrielleelise1981: If you go to any online mortgage calculator and enter in your loan information, it will show you how much any additional amount will help! This helped us tremendously as we had a 30 yr but wanted to pay it off sooner. We just took that extra principle payment and put it in our budget so it is always there. We make at least one full extra payment totally directed towards principle each year and $500 extra each month and it took our 30 yr down to being paid off in 9 yrs. Not to mention the amount of interest we save!!!
We saved 20% to go towards our home. That's not including the closing costs, inspection and fees. Including everything, we paid about 23%. Fi's parents gave us a little towards the fees, if they hadn't, we would have only been able to put 18% down plus closing costs (20%).
We weren't consciously saving for very long, but we don't spend much at all normally and Fi saves naturally. I saved for 1 year and Fi saved for 2 years, but we've had big vacations both years. We try to buy groceries on sale when we can, limit our eating out (unless they accept certain vouchers that Fi gets at a discount from work), don't go clothes shopping unless it's absolutely necessary, and enjoy low/no-cost hobbies. The biggest expense we have each month is on groceries. Vacation is also a must for us.
We're lucky to have found a place we love and right now (thanks to the low rates), our mortgage is about the same as what we were paying in rent. Our goal is reduce our principal to take advantage of the current low rates. (Though it can be a little tricky because the only way to do that here is to have a variable rate - because you can't pay extra with a fixed rate like you do in the States).
We have about 60,000. Most of it from the sale of my condo. It's not near enough, in this high COL area. Most single family homes in good school districts with a decent commute are at least $500,000 to $600,000.
:-S. Oh man a condo in NYC is going to be expensive... but awesome. Kudos to you my friend for saving towards your goal.I heard NYC is the only place in the US that didn't really have a drop in real estate prices. Your down payment will vary depending on the type of loan you select. I don't know how you are, but I'm a terrible saver. However, when I put my mind to something it gets done. I'm sure you and your hubby will do a great job and find a fabulous home.
We did an FHA loan; however we also had a new home and we had to pay for 20% of any upgrades. Our total initial downpayment was $17k I believe. Our house had decreased by 100k. It just sucks because we have new neighbors that are less than ideal. Hopefully our association buckles down and keeps them in check.
Closing costs are based on the price of the home which varies by location. Our home was $122K so our closing costs and fees were about $6000 (which we had planned and saved for....the sellers chipped in on $3000). We were intially going to need 5% down but quailified somehow for no money down and no PMI. We only had about $3000 for a down payment, so would have needed to borrow additional money from my parents if we were asked for the 5% down. Phew! Dodged that one :o)
Oh, we bought a 3BR/2Ba home (1400 sq. feet) with fenced in yard in a suburb of Tampa.
We only put about 12% down, but don't have any PMI, our lender doesn't charge for PMI if you get a 30 year mortgage and put down at least 10%. Works for me!
I didn't want to put all my savings into the house, so we got an affordable house.
Closing costs were almost 3000 for us.
I guess things are quite different in Canada for the most part. We put over 100k towards our house which was a 25% downpayment. Our goal was 20% which we were able to exceed. closing costs for us where about 5k. and we had money saved for renovations, maintenance and the wedding.
The banks in Canada now are pushing for higher downpayments if possible. In Canada the government loans aren't like the US. We can't put no money down. Even new development of condos, requires approximately 15% to 20% downpayment over the course of 6-9 months in Toronto.
We had $8,000 saved when we started house hunting.
Our loan was a 30 year fixed FHA loan. FHA loans are common and worked great for us. We absolutely did not want a loan with arms.
Anyways, we paid the asking price for the home, but as part of our contract the sellers covered closing costs. We paid a 3.5% down payment on the home which is what is required for a FHA loan.
In the end we did not end up using all of the $8,000 to buy the home. The rest of the money was quickly used because we had to buy all new appliances, gutter guards, some new furniture and misc items like paint, tools, lawn mower etc...
I would say that saving more money is better than less! We had been thinking about buying the home, but it was an idea for the future. Then our landlord was acting bat shit crazy, raised our rent etc so we jumped in feet first to home buying. We started looking and 3 weeks later we were uneder contract! It was a crazy process, but I am so glad that my FI convinced me to just go for it.
Also, I would look at the websites of the cities that you are looking to buy in. A lot of cities have first time homebuyer incentive programs.
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