What % downpayment did you make on your home?

[disneysteve]

I was just reading an article on debt management. The author stated that he believes that if you can't put down 20%, you can't afford the house. So I was wondering, with the popularity of creative financing these days, how many of us put down 20% or more when buying our homes.

We bought our home in April 1994 and put down 20%.

How about everyone else?

 

[crisi]

Not us. I think we were something around 10%.

Eight years later its paid off.

 

[mantaz]

Due to DH being in the army, we put zero down. VA loan does not require a down payment. 5 years later the house is paid for completely. So I don't agree with the author. It truely depends on what size house, where you buy it and how you work your finances if you can afford a house with or without a downpayment.

Angela

 

[Julia M]

We put 20% down in 1992.

I also don't agree with the author's philosophy. I think it also depends on where you live.

There is no way we would have come up with the downpayment (60K) if dh hadn't bought a house young (at 23) and it appreciated.

If someone had postponed buying a house a couple of years (in our area) until they had a bigger downpayment, they might find the cost of the house went up alot (like 100K)

Like anything else, generalizations can be faulty.

Julia

 

[disneysteve]

I never said I agreed with the author, even though we did put down 20%. But 10-15 years ago, that was pretty standard. I think the point he was probably trying to make was that lots of people are buying houses they can't afford by using minimal downpayments, interest-only mortgages, etc. That I would tend to agree with.

 

[PaulaSue]

9 years ago we put 5% down.

 

[MickeyMickey]

2002 - 30%

 

[kritter]

1999-20% well a bit more than that,,,,

 

[Franne]

7 years ago we put down 10% on a 30 year loan. But now we have a 15 year loan...only 11 years to go and it's going down quickly! I do wish we could have put down more, but we just didn't have it at the time.

 

[DVC Sadie]

I assumed a loan for my 1st house in 1983 then we put 20% down on our new house in 1987.

 

[lilprincessnbuzz]

1994 - 30% down

 

[petrymom]

first home - 1993 nothing down FHA loan

second home (built in 1999) - profits from sale of first home and little bit saved = 25% down originally had 30 year mortgage and now have 15 year mortgage (should be paid off in 7 years.)

 

[pearlieq]

1st home (2002) 5% down

2nd home (2004) 10% down to start, bought down to 20% at refi 1 year later.

I don't know a single soul who put 20% down on their house, for what it's worth.

 

[bigbabyblues]

We put down $10,000 on a roughly $70,000 house, I can't quite do the math in my head, but it's a little more than 10%.

We have never had any problem affording our mortgage, and it will be paid off in 11 more years at the rate we're going (20 years total). I do agree with DisneySteve that some people use the no-downpayment loans to buy more house than they can afford. We've seen a couple of our friends do that and end up filing bankruptcy and/or losing their house altogether.

 

[ChrisnSteph]

We put 20% on this house - almost 100K. It will be paid off in approximately 29 years, lol! The only way we could do 20% was because we had a lot of equity in our last house. I can't imagine how first time buyers can save up 20% down for a house these days. I guess it really depends on the market.

 

[Katie]

In 1994, we put 32,000 down on 132,000 house.

In 2006, we put 100,000 down on 229,000 house.

I guess that makes a minority, but my husband hates to be in debt.

 

[blanq]

We purchased our home in 1991, with a VA loan and $0 down. The money we did have saved at the time of our purchase was used to purchase all new appliances and for some needed remodeling. I guess that for us, I would have to say I disagree with the author's statement that if you can't put down 20% you can't afford the home. It was cheaper for us to pay our monthly mortgage payment in 1991 than what we had been putting out for rent, when we took into consideration the income tax savings. Now our home is worth more than 3x what we paid for it and our income has also tripled during that same period. We have no plans to move up, into a bigger and more expensive home so our housing costs now are a fairly small portion of our income.

 

[disneysteve]

We have no plans to move up, into a bigger and more expensive home so our housing costs now are a fairly small portion of our income.

I think this is a great point. If you buy your home knowing that your income is due to rise significantly, stretching a bit to make the purchase can make sense. Even though we put down 20%, we also did it when I had been in practice for less than one year. I knew for sure that my income would double within 2-3 years, and it did, which made our mortgage payments a much smaller % of income than it was initially. Plus, we've refinanced twice along the way and lowered our payment even more.

 

[Plantlady]

1 year ago, we bought our first home, with zero percent down, we got the sellers to pay the closing costs. Very little out of our pocket. Our mortgage is lower than rent was in our previous house.

 

[daddyof2]

oct. 24th 2005 about 18%