How to Purchase a Home with a Low Down Payment

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After getting married and having children, buying a home was one of the biggest decisions in my life.

My husband and I were married, living in an apartment with our first child on the way. We wanted a place of our own, a place to raise our children and a place that we could make improvements that reflected our style. It was time to make the decision of becoming a home owner and purchase a house without a lot of money.

Keep reading to see how we were able to purchase a home a low down payment.

I have partnered with Genworth Financial to share my experience of becoming a first time home buyer.

foreclosure realtor sign

First things first, we met with a mortgage broker who happened to also be a family friend. She helped us to understand our finances and we went through tons of paperwork to find out what we could afford. The entire experience was a learning process, as first time homebuyers, my husband and I had no clue what to expect.

I knew there needed to be a down payment of some sorts and had heard a number of 20% of the purchase cost. While we had a lot saved for our first home, it wasn’t near the 20% amount that they wanted.

We decided to go house seeing with our realtor to see what was out there in the housing market. I think we visited maybe 5 houses in the first day, the first one being a foreclosure. The house was so beautiful, sadly- the people who lived there didn’t take very good care of it and the foundation needed serious repairs. I vaguely remember the second two houses, but the last house was a show stopper. We were in LOVE!

So we had a house picked out and decided to sit back down at the table with our mortgage broker, it was time to figure out our options.

With the purchase of Mortgage insurance, a house can be purchased with less than the expected 20% down. When one purchases mortgage insurance, instead of applying the 20% down, it gives the lenders financial protection should you default on your loan. There are a lot of great benefits of purchasing mortgage insurance, like the ones listed here at Genworth Financial.

While we had a decent amount of money saved for the purchase of our house, we decided to go with a smaller down payment, purchased the mortgage insurance and used some of our down payment to make improvements in the home that we were purchasing.

There are a lot of things to consider when purchasing a home for the first time, we were thankful that mortgage insurance allowed us to become home owners without the stress of having a ton of money to put down.

I recently came across this article about how to make your retirement cheaper. It’s a great article because it reminds me that budgeting your money doesn’t just start with your house purchase, it is a life long lesson and these tips will help us move forward with the next step in life.

Did you consider mortgage insurance with the purchase of your first home?

 

*This post was brought to you by our friends at Genworth Financial

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