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I saw the thread about financially preparing for buying a home and didn't want to threadjack, so I thought I'd start a new thread about down payments because I'm curious. We're hoping to buy a home in the next couple years, but right now a lot of our savings are earmarked for wedding expenses. If you've bought a home, what percent did you put as a down payment?
First home was about 10% but it was more of a gift of equity so technically 0% for us and it was a FHA. Second home that we are hopefully closing on next week will be 20%. We wanted a conventional loan without PMI so we went for the full 20.
20% on our 230k home, so $46k. i'm from the school of thought that if you can't put down 20%, you should lower your pricerange. putting less down just means more expenses later from mortgage insurance.
We put down a little over 25% when we bought our house. I'm hoping that we can put down 50% by the time we move onwards and upwards in 5 years or so.
About 30%, for us that was $60K. We didn't want to pay for mortgage insurance, and wanted the lowest possible mortgage payment. We also set aside another 20K for remodel/repairs, and 10k for closing costs etc.
We're in the process of looking for our first home and we're prepared to put 20% down.
We put down 10%, on our condo, even though it means paying a PMI. We had 20% to put down, but wanted to leave 10% liquid. We got lucky because literally days after we closed, we found out that banks were not giving mortgages out to the condo's in our area without having 25% down.
about 22%, we were going to put down just 20%, but we had to put in a little more to get the mortgage amount low enough to be considered a conventional loan, instead of a jumbo.
20% We definitely did not want to pay PMI and I agree with a previous poster who said they wouldn't be comfortable buying home if they couldn't afford the 20% down. We actually could have done more but we got a great rate and so our money was doing more for us by not putting more down.
We're looking to buy in the next 6 months or so and depending on exactly what/where we end up, it will likely be 15-20% down.
ETA: I'd like it to be 20% but we'd be looking to be in this home for a while so we'd be willing to pay PMI for a short period to get in to a better home for us and our needs.
If we were going to be under 20%, we'd also look into a "piggyback" loan to avoid PMI and pay off that smaller, secondary loan quickly so we'd be left with just the main mortgage.
3.5% on an FHA loan. We could put more but we decided to save some for things like furniture.
For bees that put down 20% how did you save that much or more how long did it take you to save?
I put 12% down on my condo but I bought that almost 5 years ago (before I ever met FH) before I knew anything about mortages.
ETA: to avoid paying PMI, the other 8% went into a HELOC.
We are prepared to put down 25%-30% on a home in our price range. Anything less than that and our monthlies would be crazy OR we would only be in a 1 bedroom instead of a 2..
3.5% down, 400$ is what we brought to closing. We did put the 1000.00 down to hold the house (earnest money). We had it worked into the cost of the house though- we asked for 3000 torwards closing and they accepted...
@MrsDibs: I'm curious about that, too. How long did it take people to save up money for a down payment? How much did you put aside a month to save for a down payment?
20% with savings and help from my parents, so $40,000, plus I paid all the closing costs. Bought a 2 bedroom apartment for $194,000 so my mortgage was $154,000 and market value is $226,000. Can't complain.
We only put 10% down. We had 15% but the rates and monthly payments are the same for 10% as they are for 20%, so we kept a little extra in the bank. For us we were getting married and had a two year engagement so we had a timeline to buy a house. I understand the idea that people say they wouldn't be comfotable if you don't put 20% down, but if you option is rent of buy and just pay $100 a month until you reach the 80/20 balance then for us it was a no brainer.
@ellykay:Agreed.
I put 20% down on our house. I've been a saver and hard worker ever since I can remember. The 20% down left more than enough savings in my account for my comfort and needed repairs/updates to our house.
Ours was a little over 20%, which amounted to almost $50,000. This was about 3.5 years ago.
@MrsDibs: We were very lucky because a great majority of that money came from savings that my in-laws had for my husband's college fund. By the time he got to college, they didn't need the savings because they could pay his tuition easily out of pocket.
Call us crazy, we did an FHA loan and were able to put 5% down to lower our monthly payment. But then again we live in the Philadelphia area and houses are sooo expensive.
we only had to do $5,000 down. so i'm not even sure what percentage that actually is.
We put down about 40% on our home. We were very lucky that we were able to do so, and that's the reason DH has been able to go back to school and we can live off of my piddly salary :)
FI and I saved money because we both lived at home for a year with our parents while working full time jobs. We didn't get engaged til this summer (5 days before closing), so it wasn't too weird. We are both lucky to live near eachother and to be able to find jobs near where we live, right upon graduation.
It took us a year to save up the money (though we probably could have bought in Dec/Jan instead of July, with the same amount down, but we wanted some extra so we could buy furniture and fix up the place).
I think it definitely depends on your area what's best to do.
I put 27% down on my home (about 80k down)
Of our own money? almost nothing actually. We bought during the obama tax deal so that gave us 8k to put down which was about 4% and all we needed for an FHA loan. We could've put down more money but we needed to furnish most of the house, pay for a wedding, and keep an emergency fund. If we thought we could've done 20% we would've done it, but it didn't seem worth it to us to get to 15% then be totally cash poor with no furniture, no wedding money, and no savings.
And I know there are those that say if you can't afford 20% you can't afford a house... but I think every situation is unique. We are both newish in our careers (I was 1 year out of school, he was 3 years out of school) when we bought which is why we didn't have much saved, but we both have good salaries and steady jobs that promise lots of upward growth income-wise. The mortgage amount putting just 4% down was well within our monthly budget, and it seemed smart to buy and get 8k free from the government basically. And the reason we bought a bigger house than we need (4 bed, 2.5 bath, 2500 sq feet; we have no kids) is because we think that it is a waste to have a starter home then have to sell and get another one when you have kids. We picked a house and neighborhood we could easily stay in for 10+ years.
@CorgiTales: I feel the same way about a starter house, FI thinks it could be a good idea but I think it would be better to find somewhere we could see ourselves for awhile. With no way to predict the market, there's no guarantee we could move as planned and I'd get worried about being cramped in a too-small house. I'd like to look for something that could grow with our family.
@MaraBeth: My friend bought a starter home about 7 years ago when she first got married. Her son is 3 now and they've outgrown their 1200 sq foot 3 bedroom home. They just bought a bigger house, but lost about 1/3 of the value on their starter home and had to take it as a loss. This is something we wanted to avoid so we looked at homes we could grow into rather than out of.
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