spin off of buying a house

Do people REALLY still put 20% down? DH is insisting on not buying a house until we can do that which will be maybe... 2 years or so. But I hear of so many people putting little to almost nothing down.

Re: spin off of buying a house

With an FHA loan you only need like 3%
Less than 20% will result in you having to pay PMI- in our case it almost $160 a month on top of the mortgage

Re: spin off of buying a house

My friends put lik 3% down.

Re: spin off of buying a house

to put down nothing would mean taking a second, higher interest loan to cover the down payment and/or closeing cost.

Re: spin off of buying a house

we could only afford to put 10% down

Re: spin off of buying a house

when we bought our house in 2008 we were able to put nothing down. but that was before the market collapse. Now a days, im not sure, but I think you can still get away with minimally 3-5%;

PMI is a killer though.

Re: spin off of buying a house

it's in your favor to have at least that much to put down. dh and i put down around 38%

Re: spin off of buying a house

We put 3.5% down (FHA)

PMI is about $114 per month yeah it sucks to be paying that extra $$ but there was no way we would get anywhere near 20% down...


we would have had to put $52,000 down. Plus closing costs. Plus the house needed repairs. There would have been no way. We put down 9k

Message edited 1/6/2011 3:27:30 PM.

Re: spin off of buying a house

I personally would not put less then 20% down on a house. If that means waiting a couple of more years until we can buy something then so be it.

Re: spin off of buying a house

Defintely not. As mentioned, you can put down as little as about 3%. If we had waited to have 20% to put down, we would have been throwing away money on rent for years, which would be much more a month than PMI is.
On the house we bought, putting down 20% would have been impossible with all the renovations that we needed/wanted to do on it. It was 100% worth it to put less down, and buy a larger house in a better area, then to put 20% down on a starter home in a less desirable area.

Re: spin off of buying a house

We put between 3-5 percent down. I don't really remember what it was. We bought our house for a ridiculously low price, so I do feel secure that one day we will be able to pay it off more quickly than the plan that we have sets forth for.

Re: spin off of buying a house

Re: spin off of buying a house

We put down 36% but I don't that is normal.

Re: spin off of buying a house

No, not many people these days can afford 20%.

Re: spin off of buying a house

most of my buyers put between 3.5% and 10% down

I have a few putting more- but most are in this range

I also have a few all cash buyer- but there is always a reason for this

FHA is 3.5%
the rates are not much higher then conventional
and they did not change the sellers consession rules yet

Re: spin off of buying a house

I know it is hard to save up a 20% down payment but I marvel at folks that can afford say a 400K mortgage payment + taxes on LI.

Re: spin off of buying a house

we did - but we bought in FL where houses are cheaper so our 20% was less money than it would be on a property in NY kwim?

we wanted to have as little as a mortgage payment as possible. we got screwed with our appraisal though and still ended up having to pay pmi to get our house even though we put down 20%. aggravating.

Re: spin off of buying a house

DH and I put 20% down on our home in 2007.

It's possible, but I know it can be difficult for some.

Re: spin off of buying a house

With the way the market is and interest rates are, I think paying PMI now in the long run will be cheaper than waiting...

Re: spin off of buying a house

we did 30 percent, to lower our monthly payment. its all what you feel comfortable with.

Re: spin off of buying a house

Re: spin off of buying a house

we are putting down 10%...had I not bought my Co-op in 2005 we would for sure have put down 20%...but I can't sell the darn thing and even if I did I would end up putting money into it to sell it!

Re: spin off of buying a house

We put down 10% and bought down our PMI (to totally avoid pmi altogether).

Re: spin off of buying a house

we put down 20%. All the purchases I've appraised recently put down 20%, unless they were FHA.

Re: spin off of buying a house

We put 5% down - started with a traditional mortgage but due to a crazy chain of events in the time it took us to close, the bank stopped offering the mortgage program we had... so we wound up redoing everything with an FHA loan.

Our house needed a lot of work as well and was priced below market value (and thankfully far enough below that we are still in very good shape) so everyone we consulted agreed that less down so we had more money to make improvements was the way to go since it was a good investment.

Because we had to do a lot of stuff over, closing costs for us were well over $15,000 as well, so I am very glad we didn't put more than that down.

With an FHA loan though it's not actually PMI - it's MMI or something like that, and a lower amount monthly than we were expecting to pay initially in PMI because they roll part of it into the loan (sorry - I forget exactly how it works). However you are locked in for 5 years, whereas with PMI if you get your house reappraised and it makes up the difference between what you put down and the full 20% you can get rid of the PMI after only 1 year.