Boston Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Down payment question - Challenge post :o)
DH and I just finished filling out our preapproval application. We hope to get our preapproval letter some time next week.
We are thinking about putting down 30-35% down.
Sort of an unscientific poll, but what percentage of your home's cost did you end up putting down? I am wondering if this is a normal percentage...
Re: Down payment question - Challenge post :o)
In a high cost of living area (HCOL) such as Boston and its suburbs, most people can't even get to 20%. So 30-35% is amazing! Good job on saving so much. The more you put down the lower your monthly payments will be. Just make sure you still have a decent savings account. You don't want to deplete the whole thing and have no money left for new furniture, lawn care items, if something breaks in the house or even car repairs.
We put down a little over 5% on our SFH in the burbs.
That's great!
we put down 10% and left the other 10 in our account for closing costs and stuff for the house, we didn't want to not have a savings for if/when we needed it.
ditto the others - in this area most people can't afford to put even 10-20% down - good for you for having 30+%!
We put down 10%
I think we put somewhere between 5-8%... I can't remember for sure.
We put down over 30% as well. As you've already seen in the responses so far, this is definitely not the norm.
There are two schools of thought on this. One is that you're basically guaranteed a rate of return that equals your mortgage rate, as that's what you'll be avoiding paying in interest. The second is that perhaps you should put down less so that you can put that money to work elsewhere (i.e. other investments, not other expenses).
Thanks for the information and advice, ladies. This is the first condo that I'm buying (DH has bought and sold other units on his own) so I want to learn more about this by myself. We're definitely saving 25% of our allocated house money to pure savings. DH is a big saver and I'm a recent convert. lol
We're thinking maybe an above average DP is necessary since we're looking to buy in Boston proper...
Planning Bio - Woefully out of date
It's not "necessary." 20% down payment is typically what you need in order to avoid PMI (private mortgage insurance), but really the bottom line is that your minimum down payment is the difference between what you're offering to pay for the place and what a lender will loan you.
If you haven't already, I'd take a look at 100 Questions Every First Time Home Buyer Should Ask, Mortgages for Dummies, and/or Home Buying for Dummies. I'm sure there are parts you'll be able to skip over, but I think the biggest challenge in the ownership process is not even knowing what you don't know.
Thanks for the tips on the books! I'll have to make a note of those for my next trip to Borders.
Planning Bio - Woefully out of date
We bought a 2 bedroom loft in Boston Proper in 2008 and it wasn't necessary. Awesome if you have it though.