For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

how much did you put as a down payment on your house, and where did the money come from? have you been saving a long time/wedding $$$??? And how do you afford your monthly payments?
I dont ssee us being able to afford anything anytime soon!! THIS SUCKS!!!!


~~sorry if its too personal!

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

I dont have an answer for you - SORRY - I just wanted to say it really does SUCK...

Good luck to you - I feel you pain...

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

We put 20% down. Our house was 'inexpensive', well I don't think so but they way the market is now it is. It was just under $300K, so we put down about $58,000. We have been saving for 2 years for the wedding and the house. We didn't use wedding gifts for the downpayment but we are using some of the gifts to fix up the house. The mortgage payment really is not that bad. it is just a little higher than rent for a nice place!! We also have an apartment in our house which we can use to supplement our income someday.... but right now that is where we live because the rest of the house is gutted!
Coming up with the downpayment is the hard part! I worked 2 jobs for a while and still waitress 1 night a week. Then again some people don't put a lot down, but then you will have higher monthly payments.
You can try looking into a condo or co-op also!

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

It is hard! Our house was in the 350k range. We put 5% down. We chose to do this so we didn't wipe ourselves out totally incase god forbid something went wrong right after we moved in. We paid for our entire wedding ourselves and saved for the house. We did use some of our gift money towards the house plus whatever we saved in the 6 months after our wedding.

We lived in a big apartment that was pure HELL since our wedding. We stayed there because honestly, the rent was so cheap because of the amount of years we had been there we banked money like crazy. I think our rent was around 950 then. The mortage payment is a scary number in the beginning. What I keep trying to remind myself is when my parents first bought their house in Northport in 1971 their mortage payment was $115 a month and they were worried every month how they would make that! Now, in today's terms that would be something to laugh at!! I am hoping to feel better about the mortage payments in a couple of years!

In the mean time get rid of as much debt as possible, cut back on frivilous spending and you will get there.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

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Posted by swags1016

It is hard! Our house was in the 350k range. We put 5% down. We chose to do this so we didn't wipe ourselves out totally incase god forbid something went wrong right after we moved in. We paid for our entire wedding ourselves and saved for the house. We did use some of our gift money towards the house plus whatever we saved in the 6 months after our wedding.

We lived in a big apartment that was pure HELL since our wedding. We stayed there because honestly, the rent was so cheap because of the amount of years we had been there we banked money like crazy. I think our rent was around 950 then. The mortage payment is a scary number in the beginning. What I keep trying to remind myself is when my parents first bought their house in Northport in 1971 their mortage payment was $115 a month and they were worried every month how they would make that! Now, in today's terms that would be something to laugh at!! I am hoping to feel better about the mortage payments in a couple of years!

In the mean time get rid of as much debt as possible, cut back on frivilous spending and you will get there.

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Same here. We put 5% down and our house was $310,000. We didn't put all our savings down so we could fix it up. We used our wedding gift $ and we saved for a few years. Our mortagage payment is high, but affordable and so worth it cause like Swags, we had apartments that we weren't too happy in. Good luck!

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

20% / $93K

We had money from our wedding, plus savings & investments. My parents also gave us a 'gift' and a bit of a loan.

Making the payments has been easier than I anticipated. I thought it would really limit our lifestyle, but so far so good! We're able to put money into the house AND save (and still satisfy my sushi obsession)

Good luck - it will happen for you!

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

we have been caretaking a home for the past 3 years, so we have been fortunate in that we do not have to pay rent (bills, yes). DH makes a very decent living and combined w/ my salary and the wedding money we have managed to save a great deal of money. we haven't decided if we are going to use the majority of it as a downpayment or use only a portion and allocate the rest for home improvements and mortgage payments.

if we were not in our current living situation, we would NEVER have been able to save the amount that we did.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

5 years ago we put down $100,000.
My DH took it out of the stock market (thank god he did it then, because right after that the market went way down)

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

On my first house (I bought a condo before I met DH), I put 5% down...that was about 2 years ago and that was about 15K. We just bought this house which was in the 375K range and we put 10% down. When I sold the condo, we used the money I made in profit for this downpayment.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

Move to NC, you can buy a huge house for little or no money down and NO PMI!

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

We put down $36000 plus $12000 for closing and prepaid taxes. 10% of our $360,000 house. $18000 came from the wedding money and the balance was the money my DH saved. I paid for almost the entire wedding for the wedding, while he saved for the house.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

we put down 10 percent, 16,000..we got a good deal on a co op and we figure after the wedding we'll be able to sell it and move into someplace bigger..our payments are only 200 more than what fh was paying for an apt..go for something like a condo or co op first if you're worried about it..in this day and age, anything is making money for you once you buy it..good luck

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

We put 15% down. A majority of it came out of the stock market where DH did very well. There was also a small amount of money that my dad left me when he passed 4 years ago.

We have savings, however our mortgage and maintenance is only a percentage of our salaries.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

About 2 years ago DH put down about 6%. He had been saving for about a year and a half or so. After he closed on the house, he proposed and we planned our wedding for about 1yr8mos down the road. So, no we didn't use wedding gifts. It's really hard though. DH jumped on the opportunity when the market wasn't as bad as it is now and we are so thankful he did. I can't imagine how we would have done it now.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

We moved into FH's mom's hosue to save for both the wedding and a house. And we still will probably put down only 3%. (My student loan payments are huge).

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

We haven't bought yet but from the looks of it we will put down 10%.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

We put down 5% of purchase price and avoided PMI by getting an 80-15 loan with 5% down. We had some savings but we peeked into our wedding money. We didn't want to put 20% down cause it would have made no difference in the mortgage payment, so why wipe yourself out we thought.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

we put almost 40% down on our co-op ,, 65k It was from an inheritance. We did this becuase we couldnt afford a really big mortage and the co-op fees were 708 a month.

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

We were engaged for three years and we paid for the wedding ourselves. The payments were spead out so that helped us to save money during that timeframe. We also lived at home which helped tremendously. By the time we got married, Bob had about $60,000 he saved and I had about $10,000 - I carried alot of pre-wedding debt that I was working to pay off. After the wedding, we had about $100,000 between savings and gifts - we thought we were millionaires! We bought the house in July 2000 for $160,000 and we put 20% down ($42,000 I believe). He sold some CD's so we had $100,000 after closing to 'fix' the house. Unfortunately our story is not the norm and we had a Murphy's Law avalance of unplanned expenses and conditions. Carpenter Ants, a fire, wind damage, heating system collapsed, termites, water damage, you name it, we had it. We ripped through that $100,000 without blinking and replaced everything you could imagine. Heating system, 80% of exterior of house, all sheetrock, electrical, bathrooms, kitchen, cesspools, concrete, siding, etc. We figured if the house was going to be down to beams (and then some) we were going to put it back right. So alot of the expense we incurred was of our own doing but it is where we want it to be and after working a 2nd job for four years, we're finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Our mortgage payment runs around $1400 a month, along w/two car payments, three cars worth of insurance, two cellphone bills, three credit card payments, pet expenses, food, utilities, asst. other expenses, our dollar really has to s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d. But it is do-able....

Re: For all you new homeowners- if you dont mind me asking

we put down 20%. our house was 410,000 and we are putting down 83,000. its really hard to save the money. we thought we had more money than we did so now we picked up 2nd jobs to increase our incomes to afford the house. we will use our wedding money to furnish the house