For those of you that own a home, how long did you save? If you don't mind sharing, what percentage of the buying price did you put down? Would you have changed anything (saved longer, put down more or less, etc)?
Im curious since we've been saving for the past 6 months and will likely hold off on buying and save more until spring of 2014. I'd love to use the next year to get smart!
hostess / wonderful watermelon / 39513 posts
We put 20% down and we actively saved for a year and a half. I also had to dip into some savings that I had since I was in college to cover closing costs and renovations.
wonderful olive / 19353 posts
I bought my house 6 years ago, and I think I put down between 12 and 15%, which is a lot for me. I would have loved to put down 20% to get rid of PMI, but 20% was just not feasible for me.
eggplant / 11824 posts
For our first house we saved for about 2 years and were gifted some of the down payment by parents. We used savings we had for our second home. Both times we put down a little more than 20%, saved enough extra for closing costs/moving/inspection/etc. and enough to have a dedicated savings account strictly for home related repairs/issues.
GOLD / papaya / 10166 posts
We have a house but we're trying to save 20% for a bigger house in a better school district. That will take us a few years.
bananas / 9229 posts
We've been saving for about 4 years now (with a wedding in the middle and lots of student loans lol). But we're looking in the NYC-metro area so 20% down is easily $100k+. A lot of co-ops won't let you buy with less than that. And some require even more!
apricot / 307 posts
We currently own our home but we're looking to move to a bigger house in a better neighborhood. It's taken us 3+ years to save 25%, but that's b/c we live in the Bay Area and the city we're looking has average home prices between $900K-$1.1M.
Also, we're planning for this to be our final house...no more moving until we die.
pomegranate / 3580 posts
@sooz It will be so nice when you don't have to ever move AGAIN!
We're hoping to put down 20% and I'm getting so antsy! I look at listings almost every day 
pineapple / 12234 posts
We went FHA with 3.5%, it took about 2 months to save. If I could do it over again, we would save 20% which at the rate we were saving, would have taken 8 months. We just didn't want to pass up the low interest rates.
kiwi / 540 posts
@sooz: LOL! I hear ya on finding the "one" home and the "no moving until we die thing"!
kiwi / 540 posts
We put 10.5% down....I forget why we chose that percentage, but I guess we wanted something over 10%. We were pretty anxious to buy a place of our own 2.5 years ago. The timing seemed right, but now we kinda regret our decision because we made that decision without a baby in mind and now we are in need of an upgrade but it will take us 4 years at this rate! 
Plus, I do hate paying PMI, and the HOA fee is so darn high! REGRET x 20!!!!
persimmon / 1147 posts
We bought a home in 2010 at the height of the real estate recession so it was a fantastic time to buy. I had been saving for three years and DH was still in dental school so the down payment was all me. We put down 15%. 20 would have been stretching ourselves really really thin. It needed some work but it is our forever home we are still growing into!
GOLD / squash / 13464 posts
Hubs and I never specifically saved for a house. We are just savers by nature and had saved over time. Once we were married and sure we would be living in the same city for at least a few years we decided to buy. We pulled cash from our general savings account and we put down 20%.
honeydew / 7687 posts
20 percent and probably around 1 ear. We had the money well before we were able to start buying due to job delays.
GOLD / wonderful grape / 20289 posts
We were pretty spontaneous when buying our house.... we didn't actively save. We did happen to have lots of money in savings for a rainy day knowing that we did eventually want to buy a house though. I came into our relationship with a lot of savings because I lived with my parents for awhile after graduating and was able to save a lot and we had a lot of wedding gift money that went into the bank. So when I got pregnant..... we knew that we wanted a bigger house right THEN.
We put down 20 percent.
coconut / 8498 posts
We saved for about a year and put 20% down. I refuse to buy a house with less than 20% down.
cantaloupe / 6800 posts
I got our down payment in a settlement from a lawsuit I was involved in when I was little. We're starting to save up now for when we move again. At the rate we're going it will be a couple years!
pomegranate / 3809 posts
We put down about 20 or 25%, and it took me 3 years while living with my parents and saving about 75% of my take home pay to save up.
pomelo / 5331 posts
We used the money we got for the wedding, and we put down 3.5%. Buyers covered closing costs.
GOLD / squash / 13576 posts
My first house, my parents lent me money for the down payment. For my 2nd home, I took equity out of the sale of my first house. For the house DH and I got together we did not put any money down. Our bank had a great zero down loan with amazing rates if you had perfect credit.
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