Should You Always Put 20% Down When You Buy A Home? Not Necessarily
How much should you put down on a house? We looked at pros and cons of large and small down payments to help you make the best decision for your finances.
Buying a home is one of the biggest investments a person can make in their lifetime. One key question to consider is: How much should you put down on a house? The answer is: It’s not always 20%!
While many people believe a 20% down payment is the standard, there are other options depending on your financial situation and loan type. Understanding your down payment choices can help you better plan for homeownership, ensuring you meet lending requirements, manage your credit, and determine what you can truly afford.
How Much Should You Put Down on a House?
Estimate how much you should put down on a home and learn more about the loan options that work best for you with HomeLight’s Down Payment Calculator.
How much should you put down on a house?
While a 20% down payment is often considered the gold standard for buying a home, it’s a substantial sum, especially for first-time buyers. Saving that much can feel like a slow uphill climb, leaving you wondering if homeownership is out of reach. With home values likely to keep rising, it might even seem like you’re being priced out of the market before you get a chance to start.
Fortunately, there are other paths to homeownership. You might be surprised to learn that you can buy a home with as little as 3% to 5% down. In fact, there are good reasons why opting for a lower down payment could be a smarter choice than committing to 20%.
HomeLight looked at the pros and cons of both larger and smaller down payments, interviewing real estate and mortgage professionals, as well as investigating statistics on just how much people are putting down on homes these days, all to help you decide what will work best for you when it comes time to make your home purchase.
One note: During riskier loan environments, such as during a recession, lenders will often protect themselves by increasing the standards required to get a mortgage loan. These increased standards are called mortgage overlays, and they may include bigger down payments, higher credit scores, lower debt-to-income (DTI) ratios, or a combination of these changes.
