Girls who don't yet own a house...

I am right there with you . It is SO hard , and I just keep telling myself that we will get there , it just might take longer then expected


I mentioned to my dad about starting to look and he laughed and yelled ' you do not have 20% , why even bother , banks are not giving out loans anymore , don't you read the paper, I offered it to you but you choose a wedding blah blah blah ...'

made me feel completely hopeless .

i hear ya M-i-a! We're using our wedding money to send me back to school. So we're just trying to save n save n save. we're looking for a cheaper apartment to rent--even if its not as nice.

we're hoping to be able to get a house in 3-4 years...probably right when the market will go up again and we'll pay double what we could have paid now its depressing

We are on the same boat. What we are doing is starting January 1st we are going to put a portion of our checks towards house savings. We are going to use about 75% of our income tax refund for the same purpose. We hope by the end of next year to have the down payment. It really is hard because with inflation we tend to pay close to double on everyday purchases
We can all do it, just think how proud we will be once we raise that money. Also I tell DH all the time look how much money we spent (saved) for the wedding if we save our money like we were paying wedding bills we can be loaded!

---

Posted by jessnstu08

I am right there with you . It is SO hard , and I just keep telling myself that we will get there , it just might take longer then expected


I mentioned to my dad about starting to look and he laughed and yelled ' you do not have 20% , why even bother , banks are not giving out loans anymore , don't you read the paper, I offered it to you but you choose a wedding blah blah blah ...'

made me feel completely hopeless .

---

Just wanted to give you some hope. Banks are definitely still doing loans with as little as 3% down. Im a broker and i do alot of them. Its definitely a different market and alot more stringent, but just know that its definitely still doable. Good luck to everyone who is house hunting.

I have never lived in a house but, that is really all I have ever wanted. Its frustrating because DH had to deal with alot of crap with his moms house after his Dad passed and he doesn't want to deal with the burden of a house. So, its going to take alot of convincing for him to save.

---

Posted by CD516

---

Posted by jessnstu08

I am right there with you . It is SO hard , and I just keep telling myself that we will get there , it just might take longer then expected


I mentioned to my dad about starting to look and he laughed and yelled ' you do not have 20% , why even bother , banks are not giving out loans anymore , don't you read the paper, I offered it to you but you choose a wedding blah blah blah ...'

made me feel completely hopeless .

---

Just wanted to give you some hope. Banks are definitely still doing loans with as little as 3% down. Im a broker and i do alot of them. Its definitely a different market and alot more stringent, but just know that its definitely still doable. Good luck to everyone who is house hunting.

---

Thank you !

My fear is the interest rates on only putting 3% down and having good, but not perfect credit... BUT i do understand that banks aren't going to just give it away anymore and if the rates are higher because I put less down, then I either wait or pay the rate

---

Posted by jessnstu08

I am right there with you . It is SO hard , and I just keep telling myself that we will get there , it just might take longer then expected


I mentioned to my dad about starting to look and he laughed and yelled ' you do not have 20% , why even bother , banks are not giving out loans anymore , don't you read the paper, I offered it to you but you choose a wedding blah blah blah ...'

made me feel completely hopeless .

---

Yes this is exactly our situation too, I know we don't have the downpayment right now and why bother looking...I hate paying rent though it kills me to pay that much when I know that is what a mortgage will cost us but that is the only option we have right now it is such a bummer...

---

Posted by KK Holiday

i hear ya M-i-a! We're using our wedding money to send me back to school. So we're just trying to save n save n save. we're looking for a cheaper apartment to rent--even if its not as nice.

we're hoping to be able to get a house in 3-4 years...probably right when the market will go up again and we'll pay double what we could have paid now its depressing

---

I started to look for a smaller apartment too but we are also talking about starting a family, even though we won't own a house yet..we are both 33 and just don't want to wait anymore. My mother raised 4 of us in an apartment so that isn't really my concern just more the space issue.. Right now we are in a 1 1/2 bedroom apartment and we are dying for more storage space, in Long Beach that is tough so we are actually looking to find a bigger place but within the same price range as what we pay now. We probably won't own a house for another 2 years as well... I couldn't imagine it being any sooner

---

Posted by jessnstu08

---

Posted by CD516

---

Posted by jessnstu08

I am right there with you . It is SO hard , and I just keep telling myself that we will get there , it just might take longer then expected


I mentioned to my dad about starting to look and he laughed and yelled ' you do not have 20% , why even bother , banks are not giving out loans anymore , don't you read the paper, I offered it to you but you choose a wedding blah blah blah ...'

made me feel completely hopeless .

---

Just wanted to give you some hope. Banks are definitely still doing loans with as little as 3% down. Im a broker and i do alot of them. Its definitely a different market and alot more stringent, but just know that its definitely still doable. Good luck to everyone who is house hunting.

---

Thank you !

My fear is the interest rates on only putting 3% down and having good, but not perfect credit... BUT i do understand that banks aren't going to just give it away anymore and if the rates are higher because I put less down, then I either wait or pay the rate

---

The rates are actually comparable to conventional loans. There are a few differences in cost, but it is an option if you dont think you will be able to get 10 or 20%. Hopefully the rates come down even more to help stimulate the housing market.

---

Posted by CD516

---

Posted by jessnstu08

---

Posted by CD516

---

Posted by jessnstu08

I am right there with you . It is SO hard , and I just keep telling myself that we will get there , it just might take longer then expected


I mentioned to my dad about starting to look and he laughed and yelled ' you do not have 20% , why even bother , banks are not giving out loans anymore , don't you read the paper, I offered it to you but you choose a wedding blah blah blah ...'

made me feel completely hopeless .

---

Just wanted to give you some hope. Banks are definitely still doing loans with as little as 3% down. Im a broker and i do alot of them. Its definitely a different market and alot more stringent, but just know that its definitely still doable. Good luck to everyone who is house hunting.

---

Thank you !

My fear is the interest rates on only putting 3% down and having good, but not perfect credit... BUT i do understand that banks aren't going to just give it away anymore and if the rates are higher because I put less down, then I either wait or pay the rate

---

The rates are actually comparable to conventional loans. There are a few differences in cost, but it is an option if you dont think you will be able to get 10 or 20%. Hopefully the rates come down even more to help stimulate the housing market.

---

Thank you for the information ! I feel alot better !

M IA - I am in the same boat. My rent is so high , I pay a morgage , so I know I can afford a house, I just don't have enough right now for a downpayment. I am going to save as much as possible and become super frugal ( which is SO HARD for me ) but I want a house so bad!

right now we arn't able to do much. DH is hardcore working on his music career because it has potential for him to make a very good living, but to get to that point there isn't much $ coming in. I have a good job, but its not really much for two people. So we are living pay check to paycheck. Unless we start making 3-4x what weare making right now, we will have to move out of state to afford a house.

ETA: it is frustrating because by best friends who live out of state make around the same salary as me and are buying beautiful 3-5 bedroom homes. one of them lives outside Boston and the other outside portland, so they are both near cool cities. And the homes they are buying would be around 800,000 to a million here!! Its def frustrating thinking I'll never be able to get a nice home comparable to their starter homes!

We are in contract to by our first home and close by 12/15/08. I had all the same thoughts 4 months ago before i started the process. You would be surpised what you can get now a days we put 5% down. The whole process including dwnpymt and closing cost out of pocket is around 30K for us.
Save, save, save and contact a broker, tell them everyting you have, see what you are working with before you start looking at house's. Its the best thing we did. We knew we had a committment and we knew what we could afford!
Good luck to everyone.

We are putting our wedding gift money into a CD soon. Just waiting for all the checks in there to clear. Hopefully next week I can do it - DH wants to find the best one but honestly, Bank of America had a good 7 month one (3.7% i think?) that I hope is still available. There are some 3.8 and 4.0% 6 month ones out there online, that I found on bankrate.com, but they are with banks I have never heard of - like first internet bank of ohio. If bankrate is listing them I would think they are legit and FDIC insured but for .2 percent, I don't want to risk it.

And beyond that, we are saving saving saving. I want to go out less. I want to cook more, and cheaper. I want to do more free stuff. I am going to read more and tell DH to work more I am ok with not going out as much, but DH is hard to convince ... even though he wants the house more than I do I think.

We are also buying in New Hampshire next fall or so, not here - where we can get a nice house on 1-2 acres for $175K or less. So, we are moving because we can get more for our money in addition to saving all we can.

We save every extra penny we can, and RARELY go out just to save more $$. I think the last time we went out to eat was 4 months ago on our honeymoon

Hoping to have enough to buy in 2 years

Yes there are some places you can get for 5% lets say but now its even harder to do this but even if, this is kinda what got everyone into trouble with the economy. The problem started off with people taking 0% down or 5% down and having their mortgage payments being high bc of this, well not only that bc the first few years you are ONLY paying off the interest on the place you dont even start paying off the actual cost. So if you start off with very little down then in the end will take longer to pay off. People JUST focused on getting the place for as little down as possible bc this way they actually had the possibility of buying a place. ANd didnt focus on the fact of how much your mortgage payments would be. People fell behind on payments, such high monthly payments can become hard especially if god forbid unexpected things come up which happens often.

putting down 5% we already have equity in the house, my situation was a little different we bought a forclosed home. The home actually appraised for 65K more then we bought it for. So right off the bat we have all that equity. We chose to only put down 5% even though the bank required 3%, so that we could use our money saved for some renovations. Everyones situation is different and you just have to know what numbers work for you. Our payment is less then we budgeted for so overall we feel like we got a great deal.
The market is still very good so try to be patient and save save save and something willcome along.,