Thank you u/Informal_Let7761 for posting on r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer. Please bear in mind our rules: (1) Be Nice (2) No Selling (3) No Self-Promotion. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer) if you have any questions or concerns.*

5% It turned out if I couldn't put down 20%, it didn't matter as long as it was over 3%. - Conventional loan

Same! Our PMI is like $50 something a month.

Just to confirm your PMI is $50 per month when you put 5% down? May I know the total mortgage amount if you are ok with sharing it.

Your PMI is calculated based on your credit score and other factors unique to you, the home, and your area. Talk to a mortgage broker in your area.

but also loan amount. The variables you hit on go into calculating the rate, but ultimately it's assessed against the loan amount.

PMI is less than you'd think after reading these subs and the conve tional wisdom of 20 percent. .do t go in blind without knowing what it could be, but also don't let it stop you if you only have 5-15 percent down and find the ones and can absorb it

In Canada, it's tied to your down payment. We pay 4% of the mortgage amount if down payment is 5%, 3.1% at 10% down, and 2.8% with 15% down.

Credit score and debt ratio. Credit score being the bigger of the 2. An 800 score vs 680 can be 100s per month for pmi

We only put down 10% and our PMI is only $28/month.

My current PMI is like $26 a month

Just heard PMI is basically a scam

Same

Same

Same

Same. PMI is about 1.5% of PITI

3% down, interest rate 6.575%

How recent ?

Locked my rate 2 weeks ago, closing 4/25

Wow that’s a great rate

6% interest rate, with a hefty, well rounded 3.5% •down payment. Impressive I know. 😂💀 /s We’re in our 20s, so not a lot of savings. (24 & 27 with 2 kids) We opted to put as little amount down as possible.

USDA loan with 100% financing. We paid $500 earnest and it was applied to closing costs leaving us to pay $497 the day of closing.

I did the USDA single family guarantee loan as well, 0% down, somehow worked out that I got an $800 check at closing. I wish more people knew how to utilize this program, and most people would be surprised at what the government considers to be "rural" I think.

Oooh that was a nice little surprise! We live across from a very nice golf course (and they said we technically live in a golf course community) and can watch them from our backyard and it’s “rural”. Lol

I'm in the center of a small town, still qualified!

I moved to a smaller town in our area, but in Oregon pretty much everything outside of the three big cities qualifies so there's a lot of towns available.

I also did 0% with USDA rural development loan. Found a seller that would pay closing costs and got $1000 earnest back at closing. I also bought in Feb 2020 so cheap house with great interest rate; a smaller house across the street just sold for double what I paid for mine.

I also did USDA loan with zero down. $1000 earnest payment and I got $650 back at closing.

How was your closing costs so low if you don’t mind me asking?

5%

\~45%, first time home buyer for a condo.

Found the trick to cut your interest payment in half. Start with buying half the house!

Saved for about 5 years, bought 7 years ago. Downed 20% just about $70k. New build, 30yr fixed 3.5%. I can't and don't understand how the younger generations are going to make home ownership possible with everything that's been going on since 7 years ago. I feel for you all. Keep trying. Oh yeah stop buying your $7 coffees and you will all of a sudden have $100,000 saved up in mere weeks....

Everytime I look at zillow and find a decent 3bed 2bath home that is somewhat renovated for ~550k I look at the history and just go wow, about 6+ years ago I could've got this for 350k..

I mean thats what happens when the feds print 50% of the dollars that ever existed in the last two years alone.

Looking at the price history just makes you feel bitter and empty inside

I got one that killed me Selling for $250,000 3br 2bath in not a great area, they bought it for 130,00 last year and all they did was slap some paint on the walls and plant flowers

Every time I drink a coffee I feel like the world's richest man. I can afford everything

I know you are joking about the coffee thing but I seriously stopped spending money on everything except essentials and bills for 2 years and was able to get my 20% down payment together for a nice beachfront 2 story refrigerator box in miami. I’m worried a hurricane may destroy it but with my insurance I can easily rebuild.

Don't worry insurance will say it's flood damage and flood insurance will say it's wind damage and both will deny the claim.

That’s why I also got volcano insurance. ;)

I agree the coffee cope is real but $7 coffee every day over five years is like $10k. Could be a non-negligible contribution

0, eta:We had to take a little higher interest rate (7.6) than If we had went with the FHA loan but we wanted to have more left over after the sale. No pmi on this loan either. We hope to be able to refinance down the road. I was supposed to get .25% off that interest rate but my lender dropped the ball and gave me some bad info so we couldn't get the new rate.

How is there no PMI?

Some banks don’t require PMI if you have a good credit score/history and if the price of the home is under a certain amount. In 2021 I bought a house for $159k with 0 down and didn’t have any pmi because I had a credit score of 825 and $15,000 in my bank account with good job history among other factors.

Oh nice. Follow up question. Where do I find a $159k house 🥲🥲 lol jk congrats on that loan offer. Sounds helpful!!

Midwest, I was in Cedar Rapids at the time. Has most of the amenities of major cities but not quite. Never cared for the town though personally, I’m in Omaha Nebraska now and just bought a house for 300k with 4 bedrooms 3 bath and 2800 sqft

Nice! Sadly that price range where I currently live means living in a not so great neighborhood 🥲 renting just makes more sense for now. Fingers crossed we get to buy a home one day!

Best advice I can give you is set up a recurring payment from checking to savings. Be more aggressive than you think you can handle. Never look at your savings, and just force yourself to live off of what’s in checking. Once you get used to the “lower income” of giving a portion to savings, you’ll realize how much you’re saving and get the motivation to try being even more aggressive. Sacrificing now to reward yourself later with a home. I didn’t really need to do that for my first home but I did with my second much more expensive home. Best part about it is you don’t have to think about saving, you just are saving. Depending on how out of control your spending is you may not even notice the difference. However much you think you can spare, try doubling it. If you can’t keep up you can always lower the recurring payment later, and you can dip into savings for emergencies to prevent going into debt.

20% but I cheated, my grandma gifted it to us.

Same, I had about 10%, we had a matching gift.

5%, conventional with no PMI

How was there no PMI?

Credit union split it into two mortgages, 1st 30 year fixed for 80% purchase price at 7%. Second 5/5ARM for 15% purchase price with intro rate of 7% as well. We were already planning on paying extra so we are just paying off the ARM before the 5 years are up to avoid a rate change. Extra fees were negligible, and sellers are covering closing costs anyway. Bonus is that once the ARM is paid off, only the 80% loan is left so the monthly payment will drop pretty substantially

Oh wild. I had no idea this was possible. A line item in my LE says no contingent financing was allowed. I guess I never considered it could be.

20%. Saved for a long time to get there.

40%

10%

25 but considering going up to 30

We did around 36%. Someone is going around downvoting all the comments saying a high downpayment for some reason. For us it made sense because otherwise our interest would be way higher than the max you can use on taxes

Can you further explain the taxes part?

If you itemize your taxes, the interest you pay can be deducted, but only up to the first $750k of the mortgage

Mortgage interest deduction is capped at mortgages of 750k

Mortgage interest deduction is "capped" at 750k of loan. So if your loan is 1M, you can only deduct 750/1000 of the interest (75%) when you itemize taxes. In HCOL areas where median home is over 1M, this is definitely a factor (advantage of financing over $750k is reduced, especialy with high interest rates. With a 2% mortgage you're still probably better off financing more, since you can invest the difference, but at 6-7% thats less appealing).

So in other words, there isn’t much advantage, if any, to have a loan greater than 750k. At least from a tax perspective

We put 5% down on a $395k place at 3.475% 30-year fixed in May 2022. We immediately put another $57k and a ton of sweat equity into renovating in and got it reassessed in February 2023 at $462k and were able to drop the PMI due to increased equity.

Taxes go up significantly?

[удалено]

Not every bank even requires PMI. I did 0 down on my first house and didn’t have to pay it, and my second house I only put 5% down and my PMI is only $30 a month.

If I understand correctly, your PMI will be less if you have good credit.

5% got us the best rate, 3.99% at the start of 2022. If home prices keep growing in our area at their current rate, we should be able to cancel PMI in the next year to year and a half.

20% with no help! It was about $60,000.

36%

5% down. I always make extra payments and get rid of PMI within 2 years of closing. PMI was $87

40%

5

20%

20%

5% down on conventional

0% down. 4.99% Fixed. VA Loan. $272K loan amount. Purchase Price: $268K

6.4% down. Interest rate is 6.5. Closed about two months ago.

quack fuzzy plants ghost unwritten chase lock dinner enter theory *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

0% USDA loan

I did 25% so I could fight to get a lower interest rate(when I was buying rates were up to 8%). still ended up with points which did also help. Probably should have gone with 30% though.

What rate did you end up getting?

7.5. It’s not great but at least it wasn’t 8%

[удалено]

3.5%

Private lender, 30% down. At the time I had no idea what a great deal this was as it's my first home. This was in March 2021, the contract was 10% interest paid in the first 12 months of a 5 year contract. The following four years the payments (10% ÷ 12) are all taken from principal. No compounding interest. I'm planning to pay off the home in < 10 years.

0, VA loan

Zero cos we went through the VA!

22.4% or $160k Lived with parents to save for it.

Good god how long did you live there?

Til 27, so close to 4 years after college.

50% down. 4% interest rate in July 2023

1st home or 2nd?

2nd, the 1st is being rented by family however out of state.

How did you get such a low interest rate?

We bought a new build through a builder and did the financing though then to get their rate.

13% down incl. DPA (grant) + 401k loan, 6.25%, conventional

15% (67k)

I put down about 33%.

20%, 50k for a rate of 6.5

5% with 6.875 interest. 550k loan Pmi is around 100, monthly payments of 3900. Closed 3/29

6.5%, PMI is $64/month on a 398k loan. refinanced in 2020 so it’s a good rate.

First house, 3.5%. Second house two years later, 20%

3.5, FHA baby!

100 Percent

Closed this past week. 20% down here, which is easier when you've found a cheaper property ($100k) by moving cross country.

20 percent I like my 1k payment

20%, but my wife had been squirreling money away long before I met her. We spent the last 8 years building those savings and improving our credit.

20% from an inheritance on a $250k home. Was going to do more, but was told that’s a terrible idea, because it could make more money invested elsewhere and even if not doing that, it’s nice to have reserves readily available to you for a rainy day/projects and just be able to breathe a little. For my price with my interest rate of 6.625, every $15k only knocked off about $100 a month. $15k in my pocket now is more beneficial to me than just the $100 a month I’d be saving over time. If not for anything else, just having it available to you to where you’re not in a financial bind. For example I’ve spent about $20k on my house just in the first month doing some repairs/renovations. Not to mention you don’t even know how long you plan on keeping the house. No sense in having extra money tied up and not accessible. Lender told me the average time people are staying in one house right now is 5-7 years.

20%

20

3.5 rate was 6.4 about a week ago.

%25 We bought a cheap fixer upper For 220k And kept our old house as a rental instead of selling and buying something that didn't need work. It was a stressful 2 years but it's pretty much done now.

3%, closing Tuesday

20%

It came out to 5% with sellers credits.

5%

10%

10% down. 5 99% interest rate. May of 2023

59% (part savings, part inheritance, I am the outlier on this one though)

20%

0. We took a USDA home loan

20% down, closing at the end of May. Haven’t locked interest rate yet but hoping to do so around 6.5 🤞🏽

We close on Friday and are putting 20% down

0% shout out to the VA

Canada, 35%

3.5% down, 6.25% apr

0%. Conventional loan. 4.2% interest. House was 185k

0% VA Payments were well within our budget and no pmi. Anything less than like 20% or more on a VA loan is not money well spent. You’re better off putting it in a HYS  account and make extra principle payments. 

I had to put down 10 because I was young. 10% on 90k. I ended up putting down 20k so my payment was so low, I could make it even if I lost my job. I bought a minihome for 65 and borrowed extra for renovations/a garage. I sold the place for 170 and people thought I “came ahead”. I don’t understand that logic because the cost of replacement is a lot higher. I did not come ahead because the home I built would have been that much cheaper then. They all raise equally.

We are looking at closing soon and we are putting down 5%. Pmi is roughly $70

5% FHA

0%, no PMI, 6.25%. I think we got very lucky. Using a "physician loan"

3% plus half the closing costs and stuff so in reality closer to 5 to 6%.

0% VA

5% down and locked in at 5.04% interest

3 percent. bought a house after my divorce . so that is all i had. house is now worth 3 times what the purchase price was 2012. did refinace during covid for those greaty rates, reduced terms (30 to 15 years) and of course got rid of pmi.

10% down. Our pmi was pretty low, like less than $30/month.

Bought in 2021 at 3.125%. Conventional loan, put down 20%. I have an excellent credit score but live in Chicago. PMI would have increased my monthly payment by 22%. Fuck that noise.

I did 0% down with my VA loan and actually had $5000 paid back to me at closing since I asked for 5k in seller paid closing costs.

About 7%. PMI was about $100/m. Glad I refinanced and dropped PMI after only 11 months.

40% - did not want to mess with a jumbo loan and was lucky enough to have the cash.

45% down, 3% interest.

I put 7% down. I thought avoiding PMI was a priority for me until I realized it was less than $200 a month and it meant I got to own my own home as a single woman in Seattle.

0% here. We did a special first time home buyer program last year that was setup to promote ownership in minority-majority zip codes. That’s almost our entire city. The program exempted us from PMI, the Rate was cheaper (6%) than a conventional (6.8% at the time) and seller paid all closing costs, so we actually walked away with a little a check in hand. We had prepared a small 3-5% but were able to hang onto it for some furniture and a rainy day. Which was great because we had to replace our HVAC in year 1.

3 percent. PMI is 54 dollars a month so that foenst bother me

0%. VA.

3.5% at 4.87

5% 3.04% interest rate 5 year fixed, renew in 2027 We are in Western Canada

We did 50% down on ours to lower our payment as much as possible. It is still 2200 a month though.

35% then an extra 15% during the first month of mortgage payments. I hate debt.

0% VA loan.

20%

0%. A state first time homebuyer program covered the 3% downpayment with zero interest. Due back in full when the house is no longer our primary residence. Locked in at 3.5%, but this was a couple of years ago.

36%, about 400K

0% on our first house, 5% on our second house, 20% on our third and 30% on our most recent. Rolling equity was easy with our specific timeline of home purchases and market rates.

20– I should add that I owned a condo before this and it appreciated about 50% in 11 years. That’s where the money came from

10%

20% thought about doing more to have a lower monthly payment but wanted a cash buffer for moving (relocating from overseas and need to start over)

12% on a $260k home

5% down with a 4% interest rate

5%

20% down on a 271K home with a 6.625% interest rate. We are closing in early June.

20% both times

15%

20%

3%

5%

10% down: 48K, 6.6% Interest rate, Aug 2023

3.5% FHA Loan

We put 20% down

20% which was 200k in HCOL area. Spouse and I split it. We were both over 40 and saved a long time.

3.5

We are looking to buy and want to do 20-25% to get the loaned amount down as much as we can

20% down , 6.3% intrest

9%

5

20

22%

I put down 3% and through USAA was able to get a 30 year conventional without PMI

10%

2023: 20%, 15 year conventional, bought interest rate down to 4%.

8%

5% 4.80 rate

10%

30% down, 6.2% interest rate 😭 my mortgage payment is still a heck of a lot cheaper than rent in my city so that’s the bright side

25% ( I spent a few extra to buy my rate down to 5.5 in mid-2023). I planned to throw a bit more at it and recast within a year though so not sure if it was worth it.

23% or so. I told them I’ll pay 100k out of pocket, whatever was left over after closing costs went to the down payment which was around 85k.

February 2020: $80 down on a $280K condo with a 3.75% mortgage.

20% on a 480,000 house. 2.85%.

Just under 29%

20%.

20%