Poll about the FIRST home you bought.

[6packofun]

Trying a poll here...

[freesia]

Ours was 20-25 percent, but it had to be b/c we were not citizens of the country we bought in and needed a big down payment.  We would have borrowed a bit from family, but the family who had offered it previously did not have it available when we needed it.

[IfIOnly]

We bought the the land outright and got a construction loan to build, so no down payment.

[Guest]

I always like comparing my first and second house :)

First house - 700sq ft condo in So Cal; paid 207K for it with a traditional mortgage and 20% down and walked away from it a few years later when the housing bubble burst.

Second house - 1300 sq ft actual house with a huge yard; paid 63K; rural mortgage with no down.

[Crimson Wife]

We saved up 15% (which is a ton of money given home prices in the area) but then discovered that because it was considered "jumbo", we couldn't get an 85% LTV mortgage despite excellent credit and strong income. So my parents loaned us the difference. This was at the end of 2009 so credit was really tight.

 

We have since paid my folks back and re-fi'd to a conforming mortgage.

[AK_Mom4]

20% down, which we saved while we were renting.

 

We were actually hoping to buy the house we were renting at the time but when that fell through we ended up buying a different house that was less expensive. We had been saving for about two years while renting so putting down the 20% was not really a problem where we ended up with a cheaper house.

[Arcadia]

We bought our first home when we were 29 as we marry at that age. We had $260k for down payment from savings from scholarship (hubby) and years of work. Both of us stayed with parents until we were married so we saved on rent. Our first condo was $430k.

[creekland]

I'm pretty sure for our first house we only needed 3 or perhaps 5% down.  FIL gave it to us.  We ended up selling it later for a nice profit.

 

We'd love to be able to help our kids out when they're ready to buy.  Investing in a home is (usually) a really good deal in our experience (usually being there for a reason - not always).

[hjffkj]

I haven't purchased a house, dh bought our current house a month after we started dating. It was the second house he's ever purchased. He put 10% down without help from anyone.

 

If I were purchasing my first house I wouldn't do it without putting 20% down without help.

[Guest]

My husband bought his first home with a downpayment more than 20% that he had technically saved himself. His parents opened an account for him as a kid but it was entirely his money in there. The first home we bought together after that one had the same deal - more than 20% down and we did it ourselves.

Edited April 8, 2017 by Arctic Mama

[sassenach]

We bought our first house on the eve of the housing boom. No downpayment, and hardly any fuss to get our mortgage. We then had to sell as the bubble was bursting and barely got out by the skin of our teeth. Fast forward to this year and we just bought our second home. It was a MUCH more laborious process this time. It probably required 6 or 7 times the amount of paperwork as last time. I never want to go through that again!

[SparklyUnicorn]

under 20% needed (FHA loan)

borrowed most of it from the 401K (when the economy was crapping out)

got 8K back from the feds

very low priced house anyway

 

about 20 things needed to fall into place all at the same time for this to be as amazingly magical as it was, but somehow that is indeed what happened

 

 

 

 

 

 

[maize]

5% down payment plus private mortgage insurance we had to carry until we achieved 20% equity.

 

The price of the home was under 100k so 5% was not a ton of money and we were able to save it ourselves.

[DawnM]

Ok, it was a long time ago, but I think we put down $5,000 on a $142K house.  I know the house was $142K, but I don't remember the exact amount we put down.

 

I do know it was under 20% and I do know my dad paid for it.  He offered.

 

I wish to high heaven we had kept that house.

 

Hindsight.

[Joker]

We used a VA loan so no down payment.

[JoJosMom]

I purchased my first home before I was married.  I had an FHA mortgage, so I was able to put 10K down on an approx. $125K home.  I saved the money myself.  (My dad, however, matched the amount I saved as a gift after I bought the house.  I used it to furnish the place. :) )

 

[BigMamaBird]

For our first and only home my DH qualified for a no down payment VA loan.  

[OneStepAtATime]

Bought our first home because we were living in a rental house that was falling apart (basic structure was sound but no maintenance for years and years).  For instance, water would pour in from the light fixture over the bed every time it rained because the roof had been needing replacing for at least a decade.  I felt that we either had to move or to buy the house outright and do the repairs ourselves.  The landlord lived in another country, was elderly, very hard to communicate with and seemed to have no interest whatsoever in doing anything at all to fix it.  We offered $45,000.  1300 sq. ft. (approx) 3B/2B with a decent size yard.  He countered with $47,500, saying he would have to travel to come see the house one more time and to close the deal so he wanted compensation.  He "didn't trust sales by fax".  It took so long to get him to even respond, and he hadn't intended to sell in the first place so I didn't want to waste time with a back and forth.  We agreed.  We put 10% down so $4,750.  We'd been saving for a car so we had the money.  He then actually never came at all.  His niece, a real estate agent, handled everything.  

[Guest]

We used a VA loan so no down payment.

Same with us.

[zoobie]

I think we put 10% down, and part of that was money from various grandparent wedding gifts (total of $1000). I selected with assistance, but not sure that is super assisted. ;)

[Farrar]

We put about 20% down. The money came from a game show. I guess that's a sort of program?

[Laura Corin]

I can't remember how much the down payment was, but we used a loan to cover it. No regrets. Best investment we ever made.

[Raifta]

Our first home is still our home (although we do own a second one).  We put down a 25% down payment.  I had saved up my half of that amount (and a lot more, but we used that for things like windows, a roof, exterior and interior paint etc - the house needed a lot of work) and DH 'borrowed' his half from his parents (who subsequently gifted it to him when they ended up giving a lot of money to his sister and wanted to keep things fair between the kids).

 

We were both students and working various part time jobs so my parents actually had to cosign the mortgage.  We paid it off in 7 years.

[reign]

I bought my first house with my husband at age 22 in 2003. It was $115k with no down payment. Bad bad bad choice. By 2010 it was worth $50k. It is slowly rising in value but I doubt it will ever be worth $115k. We currently rent it out.

[Lecka]

We saved ourselves but with family help (I lived with my parents for a year and saved $$$ while my husband was deployed).

 

We thought we would pay 20% down, but we ended up paying 10% down with a VA loan.

 

As far as loan benefits for a VA loan they are beneficial at 10% and not at 20%. Or that was the case at the time.

 

There is no PMI, there is a different fee and it is lowest with 10% down (or that was the case

at the time).

[Btervet]

We put 10% down, with 5% of that coming from a relative as a gift. We bought a year out of college and that was most our savings. The PMI was huge and killing us. We quickly renovated and refinanced to 20% equity to get rid of PMI. We broke all the 'rules' buying this house. The mortgage was 50% of our income. But it was a small townhouse in terrible shape we purchased as a foreclosure. It was the best we could do in a very HCOL area as young buyers. Don't regret it one bit - the mortgage was less than rent would of been. Sold the house 7 years later walked away with 35% of the value of the house as equity. Bought a new house, put 25% down, very happy with how it all worked out.

[Tap]

I said less than 20% and saved it ourselves but....

 

Dhs grandmother gave all the grand-kids $10,000 (she was terminal) before we bought our house.  We bought the house ourselves but used her money for appliances and a few important projects like a fence. It was a brand new sub-division. Our home bordered a field with cattle and an electric fence and we had a baby, so a wood fence was high priority. 

 

 

Our first house was a very simple 1000sqft, 3 bedroom, 1 bath, 1 car garage home in a subdivision of similar homes. We bought it at 22yo.  

 

[BarbecueMom]

0% down, USDA loan. Bought in 2009. Still live here. No PMI, just a $3K ish upfront fee that we rolled into the mortgage.

 

Houses in my neighborhood sell fast because we are technically a rural area and qualify for the USDA program, even though it's very suburban and DH has an easy commute downtown.

[Ananda]

We paid 20% down payment.  We used saving bonds from childhood.  So neither did we save it ourselves, nor did we get a loan.

[Alice]

In all honesty, I can't remember if we had help or not for our first home. Our first home as a married couple was a condo. The down payment was definitely less than 20%. I believe that it was all with money dh had saved himself but I could be wrong. (I was in medical residency when we got married so no savings.)

 

We bought a single family house three years later with a loan from his Dad for part of the down payment. It was a good decision. A co-worker of dh's passed away and we were able to purchase the house from his sister before it went on the market. We both had no realtor fees and we took the house as is and allowed her to leave whatever things she didn't want to deal with in the house. In return she passed on all the savings of realtor fees to us and priced it on the low end of the market. With the amount we saved we took out a bigger loan and did some major remodeling before moving in. We also were able to keep our condo and rent it. Then six years later when we were ready to move to a bigger house (more kids) we sold both properties and were able to put down a fair amount as a down payment. 

 

I answered with assistance because in reality we have had assistance from family many times. I figured that was in the spirit of the poll even though I couldn't remember if it was technically true for our first house. 

[SKL]

We wanted to do the 20% down payment option with a short-term loan from one of the homeowners, because the 10% down payment option required us to pay some sort of extra insurance premium.  However, that person's family had a fit, so we all just paid the premium until we had enough equity in the home.  So we did a 10% down payment out of our respective available cash.

 

Two of us were in rent at the time, so buying the house even with the extra insurance payment was still more sensible than waiting to buy.

Edited April 8, 2017 by SKL

[Pawz4me]

I bought my first home as a single 22 year old and made about a 30 percent down payment. I'd saved about half of it myself and  was gifted the rest by my parents. Apparently they liked me quite a lot. :)

Edited April 8, 2017 by Pawz4me

[snowbeltmom]

We were 24 when we bought our first house and put 10% down that we had saved. 

[Ali in OR]

I know we were at less than 20% because we had to have PMI for a year (at that point we had it appraised and values had gone up enough that we had 20% equity). We probably had at least 15% when we bought. We had been married for 2 years, both of us working and saving a good chunk for that eventual down payment. No help from anyone else, and unlike many today, no student debt to pay off either.

[Crimson Wife]

I can't remember why we didn't do a VA loan- maybe because there was too low a limit on the mortgage size? We went conservative on our house purchase but we weren't going to compromise on living in a safe neighborhood. Basically anything that wasn't a "jumbo" mortgage in our area would either be a tiny condo or in an iffy neighborhood.

[Terabith]

We got a VA loan that didn't require a down payment.

[Melissa in Australia]

Other

 

DH had bought the land very cheaply before we were married. We camped on land in a pup up caravan for 1 year. We then rented a house for 1 year as DH build a cottage on land. we shifted into cottage and saved as fast as we could, lived for a year without electricity, etc. never bought any new furniture etc..... and saved then did improvements then saved some more. By the time I was expecting child number 5 we had saved enough to do an extension that doubled the size of our house into the palace it is now.

 

 

DH and I got so much into the habit of saving and living extremely frugally that we have since bought 2 investment houses  without having to get a loan.

 

 

We also never budget. what we do instead is spend the bare minimum and put every single cent spare into savings.

[SeaConquest]

I can't remember why we didn't do a VA loan- maybe because there was too low a limit on the mortgage size? We went conservative on our house purchase but we weren't going to compromise on living in a safe neighborhood. Basically anything that wasn't a "jumbo" mortgage in our area would either be a tiny condo or in an iffy neighborhood.

This was why I didn't use my VA entitlement. It was just too low. I bought my first condo with an 80/20 loan. Zero down. They were offering 105% LTV at that time.

[Scarlett]

It has been a long time ago. 1988. The house was $38k. We put $500 Ernest money down and needed $1700 at closing. Our payment was $400 a month. 10% interest. We refinanced 5 years later to 7% and a 15 year term.

 

 

We did no major improvements. Just upkeep basically. Sold it 14 years later for $76k.

[The Girls' Mom]

Our first house was in 1997, and we only put down $500 in earnest money.  FHA loan.  It was a 4 bedroom, two story house with a two car garage, that was under 10 years old...we paid $88,000 for it.  We sold it in 1999 for a little over $100K.  Those were the days.  

[Pronghorn]

We bought a two-family house with another couple. Our share of the down payment was pretty low.

[KungFuPanda]

VA home loan.  No down payment.  We're still in our first home, but we skipped the starter house and went straight to the family home.  This means we have another VA home loan in our pocket since we're both vets.  

[Heathermomster]

2% down with VA financing.

[Barb_]

We put 3% down I believe, with an FHA loan. I was only 24 and had one child with another on the way. Looking back, we were just babies!

[Joker]

VA home loan. No down payment. We're still in our first home, but we skipped the starter house and went straight to the family home. This means we have another VA home loan in our pocket since we're both vets.

You can actually use the same VA loan benefits more than once as long as the first loan is paid off. We just bought a second home using a VA loan after we sold our first home. Dh is the only veteran in our family.

[Lady Florida.]

There was no "we" yet, it was just me. I didn't have a down payment for my townhouse and didn't need one to get a mortgage. When I met dh he also owned his own home. We sold mine. Eventually we sold his/ours and downsized so I could stay home with ds.

[luuknam]

Other. We got a $20,000 mortgage from my spouse's dad's employer (who was worth a few hundred million), not from a bank. Which was for a $13,500 house. The extra money was because the house needed $5,000 in foundation work, as well as other repairs. So, no downpayment. 

 

ETA: and, since apparently we're listing ages, I was 22, spouse 30, and we were in college at the time (spouse was back in college after having been in the army), and we sold it for $20,000 when we moved 6 years later. 

Edited April 9, 2017 by luuknam

[emmaluv+2more]

My ex bought our first house when we were engaged. He bought it for $18000. It was condemned. We gutted it and rehabbed it (put about $20000 in it). There was no down payment as the entire amount was actually a revolving line of credit construction loan until it was finished and we refinanced. We sold it 3 yrs later for $96000. We used the equity to purchase our second home in 2005. We sold that home last year due to divorce and got exactly what we paid for it.

[SemiSweet]

We used a VA loan with no down, we also didn't have to pay the funding fee because of my disability rating.

[Sneezyone]

Our first house in 2002 was something like $106-124K, I can't remember. I wish we'd kept it! We got a $10K gift from my dad and used VA so the gift covered closing costs and some furnishings. We sold that one in 2006 and bought a new house in 2007 using a conventional loan w/5% down.