When Is a House Down Payment Due and How Much Do I Need?
When is the down payment due on a house, and how much do you need? Get all the facts before you decide what to put down.
The act of buying a house feels like a pivotal, exciting, momentous, and even romantic endeavor. You’re taking a leap into the next phase of your life — making a home your own for the long haul or to use as an investment stepping stone.
While this may be the stuff of daydreams, the actual process of buying a house is much less sexy. It’s meticulous, calculated, and full of logistical maneuvers. However, it’s all necessary for nabbing that home of your dreams.
One of the many steps along the way that you might not fully understand is the matter of down payments. The down payment on a home gets your foot in the door, and the mortgage lets you move in. It’s the first financial move you’ll make in securing your new home purchase. And it’s a lot of money, so you’re probably wondering: When do you actually have to give the down payment to the seller?
Down payment due dates can be a bit of a gray area. There’s not a specific way to approach the down payment, nor one set amount. The size of your down payment can depend on a variety of factors, like where you’re buying, how much you have saved, and what kind of mortgage you’ll get.
With all of the variations and options out there when it comes to down payments, making a plan can instill doubt and confusion. How do you know exactly what to pay and when to pay it?
With the help of real estate experts, we’re breaking down all the details for how much you should pay and when the down payment is due.
Let’s jump in!
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When is the down payment due?
Since a down payment is, as the term suggests, the amount of money you’re putting down on the purchase of your home, your mortgage lender will need to see proof of these funds fairly early on in the approval process.
But that doesn’t mean the money will leave your account just yet. To make a long story very short, your down payment is officially due at the time of closing.
We’ll get into loan specifics later, but to give you some actual numbers to make sense of everything for the moment, consider this:
While 20% has long been touted as the so-called ideal amount, it takes significant savings to afford putting this much down payment on a home — and it’s certainly not the norm for first-time buyers. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the average first-time homebuyer down payment in 2024 was 9%.
This means that on a $200,000 house, new buyers were putting up at least $18,000 and using a mortgage loan to cover the remaining balance.
On a $350,000 home, a 9% down payment would look like $31,500.
This percentage on a $500,000 property would be $45,000 — and so on.
Whether we’re talking 9% or 20%, for many folks, saving several thousand dollars — or even tens of thousands — to use as a down payment can feel like an insurmountable task. While there are tips and tricks you can use to help get the ball rolling, know that there are zero down payment mortgage options available, too. (Again, more on this later!)