We are looking to buy a house or a condo after the wedding and were wondering how much we should expect to have saved. Anybody willing to tell me where you live, what you live in, how much you put down, and what your payments are like every month? (I know this is a rather personal question!)
NPbride
Posted:
Member since
Re: Recent home buyers: How much down?
Posted by computergirl
We put down 10% when we bought our house 3 years ago. In reality we had the money to put down 20%, but I was skittish and wanted to have some money available to spend or invest elsewhere.
We did pay PMI for a while, but we've also been paying extra on our mortgage whenever we have extra money saved. So when the amount we had paid on the mortgage surpassed 20%, we wrote to the mortgage company and the PMI ended.
Here's a question I've been wondering about for a while: you *always* seem to hear how you want to avoid PMI at all costs. Like it's this huge financial drain.
In reality, it was $40 a month. With the cost of a typical Long Island house plus typical Long Island taxes, $40 a month is a REALLY tiny piece of the monthly payment. In retrospect, I'm *glad* I didn't take all my savings and put it down back then-- $40 a month, during the two years we paid PMI, is less than $1000 altogether.
Is PMI generally more than that? Or is there something else bad about PMI that I don't know?
Well, that was a few years ago and prices of houses have gone up ALOT. My BIL is paying PMI (they only put down like 3% and their PMI is over $200 a month. I don't really know too much about PMI though so hopefully someone else will jump in!
TracyInQueens
Posted:
Member since
Re: Recent home buyers: How much down?
Posted by computergirl
We put down 10% when we bought our house 3 years ago. In reality we had the money to put down 20%, but I was skittish and wanted to have some money available to spend or invest elsewhere.
We did pay PMI for a while, but we've also been paying extra on our mortgage whenever we have extra money saved. So when the amount we had paid on the mortgage surpassed 20%, we wrote to the mortgage company and the PMI ended.
Here's a question I've been wondering about for a while: you *always* seem to hear how you want to avoid PMI at all costs. Like it's this huge financial drain.
In reality, it was $40 a month. With the cost of a typical Long Island house plus typical Long Island taxes, $40 a month is a REALLY tiny piece of the monthly payment. In retrospect, I'm *glad* I didn't take all my savings and put it down back then-- $40 a month, during the two years we paid PMI, is less than $1000 altogether.
Is PMI generally more than that? Or is there something else bad about PMI that I don't know?
They estimated about $100 for us. Maybe because the prices have gone up a lot since you bought? We are putting down about 12%. We just didn't want to totally drain our savings.
