DH and I were having a discussion / debate about this. Curious to know. Feel free to just respond to poll and remain anonymous if that is more comfortable. For purposes of this poll, I am defining significant as more than $20,000 (even though I personally wouldn't necessarily consider gifts amounts below this threshold to be insignificant).
Did your or your SO's parents or grandparents provide significant help with your home purchase?
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No. We had no help at all.
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We had no help at all
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No one offered any help and we didn't ask for any. I think my parents helped my brother out a little when he bought his town home but it was less than 20K.
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No but my husband's parents helped him purchase his starter home back when he was single. ETA less than 20k though.
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We had some help, but not nearly my established threshold of $20,000!
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No one helped us.
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We just put in our first offer (eek! send good juju our way) and have had zero help offered/asked for.
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No, we did not get any financial help from either of our parents- not offered/ not asked. Our house was the third my husband purchased and when he was 25 buying his first house he still did not receive financial help from either of his parents.
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In a way, yes. My in-laws saved a substantial amount for my husband's college, and when he was off to college they could pay his tuition out of cash flow. The savings were in his name, though, so he had a lot of savings that he didn't put away himself. We ended up using those funds for our downpayment.
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@mrscobee: what's the debate about?
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I voted based on the amount being for a down payment, we had no help in that area.
My husband and I delayed home ownership for a long time, we were able to save for a down payment, but I don't have any issue with accepting money from my parents.
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Not with our first house but they gave us a little bit ($3k) with our second house and we paid them back.
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No help. But I would not be opposed to working out a deal for something like this if any of our parents were in the position and wanted to help- a home can be a good investment and it would be paid back. But it didn't work out that they wanted to help or we needed it.
My parents did help my brother buy out his part of the house when he and his ex divorced, but that was an extenuated circumstance.
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I voted yes because they did help us (they gave us a lump sum as a wedding present) and it was significant to us - but the figure was less than you quoted.
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Nope. However at once point we considered buying a fixer upper and my dad was happy to lend us some money for updates if we needed them since we were depleting most of our savings for the downpayment. We ended up not going that route though.
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Let's see.. we could've bought a home without help, but we got a lot of help, so used it to buy a nicer home than we would've afforded otherwise.
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No help was offered/asked for.
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No help. But my ILs packed and helped us move all our stuff and my parents helped us unpack which was marvelous because I was pregnant and super nauseous 24/7. So no financial help other than saving our sanity and the cost of movers!
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Nope no help for either of our houses. I honestly can't imagine a world where we would accept more than $20,000 from our parents since we want to make sure they are saving for their retirements.
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No help with either house.
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Yes, my parents gave us a sizable chunk towards our downpayment. We live in a hugely expensive area and they can well afford the amount they gave us. Plus part of the reason why we wanted to move was so our house would be more conducive to them visiting. My mom has had both knees and both hips replaced and us living in a 4 floor townhouse wasn't easy for her. Also, she was unable to even get into the one shower we had in that house.
*Shrug* we're all happy with the arrangement
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Yes, we had help for the down payment of our first condo together, which directly enabled us to buy it. We’ve needed between $50k-80k for the down payments on both homes we’ve owned/lived in, which we didn’t have in savings when we first bought (and we were not interested in raiding retirement accounts for the down payments). MIL was/is in a financial position to help without any strings attached, and we are very thankful!
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No.
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@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: Just about what percentage of people really have this kind of help (and I just made up the $20,000 number because I feel like that is pretty big number, but fully realize that number could be considered big or small depending on your background, etc.). I think I was trying to argue it was lower, and DH was thinking it was a large percentage, but we were just thinking of people we know, and it wasn't that large of a sample size...
I have a lot of friends in the real estate / mortgage business, and we built our home and have refinanced a couple times, so the topics of gifts and how people afford their homes has come up with our mortgage broker on a number of occasions. And we have an eclectic neighborhood, and some of the people moving into the new, very expensive houses look very suspiciously young! But you just never know anyone's story when it comes to how they purchased a house. Don't really care THAT much, because we did have some help too - just an interesting conversation we had!
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I had help, but it wasn't any larger than a legal "gift" (the amount you could receive and not be taxed on. At the time I think it was $10K per year per person?). And it was as a result of inheritance from my grandparents. My mother gave each of her three children the same amount of money, so it wasn't like "You want a house? Here's the downpayment."
I'm not sure what my siblings used their money for, but mine went toward a downpayment.
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My mom leant us 10k and we paid it back in about 8 weeks. We were just out of school and built a new house so we needed money for a down payment. I voted no in the poll.
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@mrscobee: it's definitely an interesting topic, but I feel that way about most money matters.
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We didn't
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Yes. We were gifted 100k as a down payment for our first home.
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Similar to @twodoghouse: my husband's grandmother had given him a significant amount in savings bonds over the years that had been intended to help pay for college, but my husband got a huge sport scholarship so we used the money towards our home purchase instead. However, we could have afforded the full downpayment without that amount, this just let us leave more in savings.
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Not me, but my SIL received well over this to purchase her house with her then-BF, now-fiancé. I don't know all the ins and outs, but I know SIL could afford it, just didn't have the full downpayment maybe (20% would have been about $100K) and I know my in laws were in the position to help easily.
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No way. It will be a long time before we can buy.
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We did have a lot of help from my parents. They had given us a really large budget for our wedding and said that whatever we didn't use they would want us to have as a down payment. It was very generous of them but they are fortunate to be in that position, while we likely never will be (which is fine, just based on our preferred careers)
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My parents gifted us most of the downpayment towards our first home. When we bought our second home it was actually our second mortgage so they lent us the amount we "really" wanted to put down (since most of our cash was tied up in the first house) and we paid back the loan in full two months later.
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$0.00
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We have yet to purchase our first home, but my parents have offered help in the form of a no-interest loan, and only to the tune of about $5000 or so. We live in a low-cost area, though, so combined with our savings that should get us far enough.
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We put up all the money ourselves, but we did finance our home through my parents, which facilitated a more favorable interest rate than we otherwise would have gotten, among other benefits.
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No one helped and we wouldn't have asked.
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Wow, this is a bit eye-opening for me, I didn't realize so many people got help for down payments. We didn't receive any financial help from anyone when we bought our house. We were young (24), and cash-poor, so we just didn't put down a down payment at all. I know that's not feasible now, post real estate bubble, but it was the only way we could buy a house at the time.
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