Current Events > "You should make sure you put 20% down on a house"

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yeah, let me just move into a dirty old shack in the ghetto, sell my car and take the bus everywhere, never go out and have fun, never play video games, get rid of my cell phone, and in 12 years I will have enough money to put 20% down. So easy!!!

Eh, gotta make some sacrifices to get on the property ladder.

Thankfully there are some different mortgage loans where you only need 3-5% down and can still get a decent interest rate.
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Pro tip: There's a lot of financially illiterate advice when it comes to buying homes
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20% down lets you forego escrow and make payments to insurance and taxes yourself.

darkphoenix181 posted...

20% down lets you forego escrow and make payments to insurance and taxes yourself.

Also PMI

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Orchestrion posted...

Thankfully there are some different mortgage loans where you only need 3-5% down and can still get a decent interest rate.

Which is what I'm gonna do.

But a lot of older people who are supposedly knowledgeable about finance and money and stuff are telling me not to go that route.

Strictly speaking, 20%+ is better in the long run for a lot of reasons but you have other considerations too, like your current cost of living and how urgently you need the new place.

I bought with less than 20% down for my current house, which I never would have done considering my last one was paid off, except that we needed more room(s) quickly for Little DevsBro.

There's the other side of things too, in which I managed to pay off 60% of the principle before the second payment was due thanks to said equity in the last house, which minimized the damage of not meeting 20% rather drastically.

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My wife and I bought our first house back in June. 1st home buyers + excellent credit scores allowed us to put 0% down.
We rolled most of the closing costs into a small second mortgage we'll pay off within the year. We only paid about $4k from the time we said we want this house until the time keys were placed in my hand.
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If the expected appreciation on the home + the savings you get from not paying rent exceed the mortgage interest rate, PMI, maintenance, tax, and other costs of owning, it's still generally worth it even if you put 0% down.
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