^How much would you put down for this?

[mrshandy]

Just curious about people's thoughts on this.

As I've posted about ad nauseum, we're planning on buying a house in the DC area. I was crunching the numbers today and I think we'll have about $63K when we finish saving. This is our entire savings apart from retirement savings.

We want to buy a house in the $375K - $415K range.

How much would you feel comfortable putting down? We're not looking to buy a fixer-upper. A few things we'll need updating eventually. But my concern is the house being functional. We can live there just fine and will fix things to our liking when we rebuild our savings.

ETA: If it matters, we're hoping for a mortgage + PMI payment of no more than $2100/month.

[ijack]

once you buy the house, how much will you be able to save a month?

[mrshandy]

Jan 11, 2013 11:07:57 GMT -5 ijack said:

once you buy the house, how much will you be able to save a month?

Right now we're saving $1260/mon for the house. But that's going to go down once we have another in daycare (early November). I'm going to get a payraise, so I'm thinking maybe $500/month. We'll be trying to rebuild as much as we can for those few months before daycare. My ML will be paid.

[countthestars]

We wanted to have $30k in savings leftover after we purchased our house - ~$10k for house stuff, furniture, etc and $20k in an efund/baby fund/general savings. Honestly though, I would save more before I bought since you have less than 10% down in that scenario and I'd want to put down at least 10%.

[countthestars]

Are you looking for PITI of $2100? Is that possible with that price/DP? If you borrow $350k at 3.5% my calculator is spitting out ~$1600 in mortgage alone.

[ijack]

I think I'd want $20k in savings.

[bunch]

I'd put down 10 percent so that I had some equity and felt comfortable. Otherwise I'd just put enough to make the payments what I wanted them. My thought is if you're not going to make the 20 percent, it really doesn't matter.

[yellowbrkrd]

I would put down 10 percent. That would leave you with a good chunk left in savings.

[mrshandy]

Thanks for the info. I know it's going to be tight no matter what.

We're prepared for that. I'll have to see what we can get interest rate wise. Our credit is excellent. Mine in particular. So I hope the interest rates stay low over the next few months.

Yeah 20% down is not going to happen. We've been saving for over 4 years. It's just going to get harder to save once we have #2 in daycare.

[mrshandy]

Jan 11, 2013 11:28:48 GMT -5 BirdGirl said:

Jan 11, 2013 11:27:15 GMT -5 mrshandy said:

Thanks for the info. I know it's going to be tight no matter what.

We're prepared for that. I'll have to see what we can get interest rate wise. Our credit is excellent. Mine in particular. So I hope the interest rates stay low over the next few months.

Yeah 20% down is not going to happen. We've been saving for over 4 years. It's just going to get harder to save once we have #2 in daycare.

I wouldn't wait as long as you have stable jobs. I would keep some cash on hand - we have had so many unexpected things come up with our house.

We do. I'm a fed and DH is in a stable industry.

[sillygoosegirl]

I would save longer, or buy a less expensive home.