How Much Down Payment do I need?
Should You Make A 20% Down payment?
"How much down payment should I make on a home?"
It's a common question among home buyers -- especially first-timers. And, the answer will vary by buyer.
If you're a home buyer with a lot of money saved up in the bank, for example, but you have relatively low annual income, making the biggest downpayment possible can be sensible. This is because, with a large downpayment, your loan size shrinks, reducing the size of your monthly payment.
Or, maybe your situation is reversed.
Maybe you may have a good household income but very little saved in the bank. In this instance, it may be best to use a low- or no-downpayment loan, while planning to cancel your mortgage insurance at some point in the future.
One thing is true for everyone, though -- you shouldn't think it's "conservative" to make a large downpayment on a home. Similarly, you shouldn't think it's "risky" to make a small downpayment.
The opposite is true.
About the riskiest thing you can do when you're buying a new home is to make the largest down payment you can. It's conservative to borrow more, and we'll talk about it below.
What Is A Down Payment?
In real estate, a downpayment is the amount of cash you put towards the purchase of home.
Down payments vary in size and are typically described in percentage terms as compared to the sale price of a home.
For example, if you're buying a home for $400,000, you're bringing $80,000 toward the purchase, your downpayment is a downpayment of 20 percent.
Similarly, if you brought $12,000 cash to your closing, your downpayment would be 3%.
The term "down payment" exists because very few people opt to pay for homes using cash. Their down payment is the difference between they buy and what they borrow.
However, you can't just choose your downpayment size at random.
Depending on the mortgage program for which you're applying, there's going to be a specified minimum downpayment amount.
For today's most widely-used purchase mortgage programs, downpayment minimum requirements are:
FHA Loan : 3.5% downpayment minimum
VA Loan : No downpayment required
HomeReady™ Loan : 3% downpayment minimum
Conventional Loan (with PMI) : 3% downpayment minimum
Conventional Loan (without PMI) : 20% downpayment minimum
USDA Loan : No downpayment required
Jumbo Loan : 10% downpayment minimum
Remember, though, that these requirements are just the minimum. As a mortgage borrower, it's your right to put down as much on a home as you like and, in some cases, it can make sense to put down more.
Purchasing a condo with conventional loan is one such scenario.
Mortgage rates for condos are approximately 12.5 basis points (0.125%) lower for loans where the loan-to-value (LTV) is 75% or less.
Putting twenty-five percent down on a condo, therefore, gets you access to lower interest rates so, if you're putting down twenty percent, consider an additional five, too -- you'll get a lower mortgage rate.
Making a larger downpayment can shrink your costs with FHA loans, too.
Under the new FHA mortgage insurance rules, when you use a 30-year fixed rate FHA mortgage and make a downpayment of 3.5 percent, your FHA mortgage insurance premium (MIP) is 0.85% annually.
However, when you increase your downpayment to 5 percent, FHA MIP drops to 0.80%.
Click to see today's rates (Jan 2nd, 2017)
It's Risky To Make A Large Down Payment
As a homeowner, it's likely that your home will be the largest balance sheet asset. Your home may be worth more than all of your other investments combined, even.
In this way, your home is both a shelter and an investment, and should be treated as such. And, once we view our home as investment, it can guide the decisions we make about our money.
The riskiest decision we can make when purchasing a new home?
Making too big of a downpayment.
A down payment will lower your rate of return
The first reason why conservative investors should monitor their down payment size is that the down payment will limit your home's return on investment.
Consider a home which appreciates at the national average of near 5 percent.
Today, your home is worth $400,000. In a year, it's worth $420,000. Irrespective of your downpayment, the home is worth twenty-thousand dollars more.
That downpayment affected your rate of return.
With 20% down on the home -- $80,000 --your rate of return is 25%
With 3% down on the home -- $12,000 -- your rate of return is 167%
That's a huge difference.
However! We must also consider the higher mortgage rate plus mandatory private mortgage insurance which accompanies a conventional 97% LTV loan like this. Low-downpayment loans can cost more each month.
Assuming a 175 basis point (1.75%) bump from rate and PMI combined, then, and ignoring the homeowner's tax-deductibility, we find that a low-downpayment homeowner pays an extra $6,780 per year to live in its home.
Not that it matters.
With three percent down, and making adjustment for rate and PMI, the rate of return on a low-downpayment loan is still 280%.
The less you put down, then, the larger your potential return on investment.
Click to see today's rates (Jan 2nd, 2017)
Once you make your downpayment, you can't get those monies back (easily)
When you're buying a home, there are other downpayment considerations, too.
Namely, once you make a down payment, you can't get access to those monies without an effort.
This is because, at the time of purchase, whatever down payment you make on the home gets converted immediately from cash into a different type of asset known as home equity.
Home equity is the monetary difference between what your home is worth on paper, and what is owed on it to the bank.
Unlike cash, home equity is an "illiquid asset", which means that it can't be readily accessed or spent.
All things equal, it's better to hold liquid assets as an investor as compared to illiquid assets. In case of an emergency, you can use your liquid assets to relieve some of the pressure.
It's among the reasons why conservative investors prefer making as small of a downpayment as possible.
When you make a small downpayment, you keep your cash position high, which leaves your portfolio liquid and accessible in the event of catastrophe.
By contrast, when you make a large downpayment, those monies get tied up with the bank. You can only access illiquid home equity via a home loan refinance, or a sale of your home -- and both of those options cost money.
Furthermore, both methods take time.
If your household is in a pinch and you need to access your money now, a refinance requires 21 days at minimum to close, but can take as long as 2 months to get finished. Selling your home can take even longer.
It's nice to make a large downpayment because it lowers your monthly payment -- you can see that on a mortgage calculator -- but when you make a large downpayment at the expense of your own liquidity, you put yourself at risk.
Conservative investors know to keep their down payments small. It's better to be liquid when "life happens" and having access to cash is at a premium.
