I know buying a house is in no way cheap and you have to have the money. But these loan calculators on the internet are giving me NOTHING. How do people put $30k down on a house? Maybe if you moved from another house and put the money you made from that down....but otherwise...i realize people save but by the time i saved up THAT much money i might as well be looking for an old woman condo!

we both have pretty good paying jobs for the area and are planning on a VA loan. So is that different somehow?

I'm so confused and at this rate I feel like even though we're well off we aren't well off enough to own a home. :depressed

If you use a VA loan you will not need a down payment, but expect to have around 10k for closing costs. Some sellers will cover them, if asked, some will not.

You can also look into house buying classes in your area. They are full of information.

How do people put $30k down on a house?



If your going VA-you can get a low down or 0 down loan:yes

If you use a VA loan you will not need a down payment, but expect to have around 10k for closing costs. Some sellers will cover them, if asked, some will not.

You can also look into house buying classes in your area. They are full of information.


$10K for closing costs? Holy crap! :tears

If your going VA-you can get a low down or 0 down loan:yes

is there a calculator that figures in VA?

is there a calculator that figures in VA?

Bex posted a VA mortgage calculator in this forum & also usaa.com has a mortgage calculator as well-hope that helps:yes

Bex posted a VA mortgage calculator in this forum & also usaa.com has a mortgage calculator as well-hope that helps:yes

thanks i'll go check it out.

$10K for closing costs? Holy crap! :tears

It is more in certain areas. I'm in CA and our closing costs are around 10k, luckily our seller gave us an 11k closing cost credit. The VA loan fee was rolled into our mortgage.

What we do is figure out how much money we want saved up and by when. And then we sit down and figure out with how much he gets paid and how much our bills are how much we can save. If we need to then we cut expenses some where. We also save any bonus money and tax return money we get.

Otherwise, VA will be your best bet.

Good Luck.

We used the VA loan so we didnt pay anything down. We did give a $1000 good faith deposit that we got back at closing. It just shows that you have money.. or something lol We also offered their asking price with them paying the $10,000 closing costs (which they came back with "not to exceed $10,000" which we accepted) and actually got another $1500 back at closing. I have also heard of people rolling closing cost into the loan. That could be an option.

Ok so we make about $65,000 a year between the two of us. Not great for some areas but in MT that is pretty decent. According to the loan calculator it says we can only get $40,000 for a house! wtf? :wowsers We don't have that much debt so i don't get it! :puzz

Let me just buy the cardboard box in the alley for cripes sake. :tears

I think those mortgage calcs are a joke.

I'd wait and see what USAA comes back with before panicking.

For us, we put $30k down and the sellers covered $9500 in closing costs. We saved every penny of OT, our tax return, my bonus money, etc for about a year and were gifted a bit of money from my late Grandmother.

You don't "need" to put money down but buying a home comes with a cost of some sort The business of lending money is not cheap. LOL

I personally recommend putting SOMETHING down, whether it's 3% or what have you. I recommend this BECAUSE in our soft market (meaning houses are in over-supply compared to the demand for them) with values dropping as they are, you don't want to go in at 100% combined loan to value because you will end up upside down realllly fast.

If you use a VA loan you will not need a down payment, but expect to have around 10k for closing costs. Some sellers will cover them, if asked, some will not.

You can also look into house buying classes in your area. They are full of information.

Unless you find a sell who is willing to cover closing costs. That is what we are trying for. we are in the same boat looking to buy. It is confusing as hell and a HUGE PITA!

Ok so we make about $65,000 a year between the two of us. Not great for some areas but in MT that is pretty decent. According to the loan calculator it says we can only get $40,000 for a house! wtf? :wowsers We don't have that much debt so i don't get it! :puzz

Let me just buy the cardboard box in the alley for cripes sake. :tears

We are a one income family and just got approved for over 200,000. I went to a lender. You can pre-qualify and they will tell you what you will be able to get.

Most sellers, especially in this market, WANT to sell their home ASAP (or HAVE to sell it) - you should always ask for closing costs in your offer.

Ok so we make about $65,000 a year between the two of us. Not great for some areas but in MT that is pretty decent. According to the loan calculator it says we can only get $40,000 for a house! wtf? :wowsers We don't have that much debt so i don't get it! :puzz

Let me just buy the cardboard box in the alley for cripes sake. :tears

What!?!

That doesn't sound right. My hubby makes a tad less than that. I don't work. We have 3 kids. And we already own a house. And we're preapproved for $300,000. Well, that is what John asked to see if we would be approved for and we got it. We may be able to get more.

Also, our mortgage is for 52,000, the property taxes, and the insurance, and we pay 411 and some change. I can't see where you could only qualify for 40. That just seems insane to me.

Most sellers, especially in this market, WANT to sell their home ASAP (or HAVE to sell it) - you should always ask for closing costs in your offer.

I agree. That is what our realtor said last year too.. and that was before everything crashed.

What!?!

That doesn't sound right. My hubby makes a tad less than that. I don't work. We have 3 kids. And we already own a house. And we're preapproved for $300,000. Well, that is what John asked to see if we would be approved for and we got it. We may be able to get more.

Also, our mortgage is for 52,000, the property taxes, and the insurance, and we pay 411 and some change. I can't see where you could only qualify for 40. That just seems insane to me.

what lender did you use?

Oh I almost forgot .. we are one income and only DH is on the loan. He qualified for over $350,000 through USAA.

We are a one income family and just got approved for over 200,000. I went to a lender. You can pre-qualify and they will tell you what you will be able to get.

where are you located???

where are you located???

Great Falls, MT

and it can't be our credit. My score is 651 (checked it yesterday) and dh's is somewhere in that region too. No bankruptcies or collections. Not fantastic but it isn't bad.

...i don't think. Or is that considered bad? :tears I'm so confused!

Do all of you have just awesome 800 credit scores or what?

i wouldn't put too much stock into that mort calc thingy UNLESS you've already heard from the bank

what lender did you use?

We have CountryWide. We started off with Guarantee but they sold us, gave us, whatever, to CountryWide. CountryWide is having some issues right now so I'm not sure if you'd be able to use them. Personally, we've never had a problem but apparently that hasn't been the case for everyone. We got our preapproval though them, too.

We do have very good credit. I'm not sure of the exact score but I know it is excellent. I will say though when we started out it was crap. Mainly due to me. I was young and dumb with credit cards. We took care of them and then worked on improving it.

not to thread jack but what percentage did you experienced home buyers put down,vs the cost of the house? i am trying to figure out how much we will need saved right now. i was thinking of putting 20,000 down and having 10,000 to cover closing, but we are only looking at houses around the 120,000 range. so the 20+ the 10,000 just seems like a lot for such a little mortgage.


let me know if that doesn't make sense and i will rephrase.

We ended up going FHA with the VA backing the loan. We don't have a down payment and the sellers are paying closing costs. For us a down payment would have been pretty small and pretty much pointless. But if it meant having a house we really like we would have done it. We had our home appraised and its worth more than we are buying for :woot

We tried those mortage calculators deals. They never seem to come out correctly.

not to thread jack but what percentage did you experienced home buyers put down,vs the cost of the house? i am trying to figure out how much we will need saved right now. i was thinking of putting 20,000 down and having 10,000 to cover closing, but we are only looking at houses around the 120,000 range. so the 20+ the 10,000 just seems like a lot for such a little mortgage.


let me know if that doesn't make sense and i will rephrase.

We were looking at houses in the $150,000 range, maybe we could have gotten more. IDK we didn't ask for more. The first loan we got required a 3% down payment. That was $4300.(I think. Suddenly my mind is blank) We ended up going with a different loan company and getting a 0 down loan. The only difference is that instead of paying the down payment upfront its included in the loan. Which makes the loan more than what you buy the house for. So we'll be paying an extra 2 or 3 dollars every month. But like Bex said you can get upside down really quickly if you do it this way.

we just bought last yr- we did not go with VA but with a similar program with NFCU-

this is how ours went: we called first USAA and the NFCU- and applied for loans thru both of them- we got pre-qualified with both banks USAA- for 245,000 dollars and NFCU for 235,000.
we then looked at rates ( percentage rates ) they were very close but USAA could not match NFCU - my score was 820 and DH's 810-
our rate is 6.25.

back track for a second: when we were looking at buying- I was going to be unemployed at the time of purchase- so they would only consider dh's income-
he was a 1st class with over 12 yrs in-
so our approval was based on one income.

NFCU also based the loan amount on the BAH rate for the area.

we found a house for 189,000 and put 1800 dollars down for earnest money-
we did not put anything else ( no down payment).
our seller paid 100% of closing costs- over 9,000 dollars and after prepaids we got 400 of our earnest money back at closing.

our house was new and NFCU was an approved lender so they paid all the closing costs!!
if would have went with USAA they would have only paid about 2500-3000 of the closing costs.

with the mortgage- insurance and taxes our payment is 1431 a month- our BAH is 1471.


I want to add: we did have 45,000 dollars saved to buy this house- but we decided to put that money into the house by adding a screen room- landscaping, fence, gutters, paint and new furniture- we also needed all the lawn care stuff that went along with taking care of your own yard.
we still have some of that money left sitting in our money market- we are planning on putting in a tankless water heater and granite counter tops in the kitchen. really it seema with buying a house it always needs something!!!

my friend got a house through the va loan no money down and he didnt have to pay closing cost they just gave him 100 dollars back :dunno why he doesnt either but he wasnt going to complain :lmao..

not to thread jack but what percentage did you experienced home buyers put down,vs the cost of the house? i am trying to figure out how much we will need saved right now. i was thinking of putting 20,000 down and having 10,000 to cover closing, but we are only looking at houses around the 120,000 range. so the 20+ the 10,000 just seems like a lot for such a little mortgage.


let me know if that doesn't make sense and i will rephrase.


We just bought our house this January. We were first time home buyers and went with a VA loan. We didnt have to put anything down, but we wanted to since we had it. We bought our home for $124,900. We only paid a few hundred for closing costs, bc the VA made the sellers pay most of it. We put down $20,000. So our mortgage payoff balance started at only $105,000.

We got an intrest rate of 6.3% so our mortgage payment with taxes and insurance is only about $750 a month.

So we put down between 15%-20%. We didnt have to, but it is such a relief to put it down and not have to worry about it. Plus, we got such a deal on our house, its kinda like just tucking money away safely. Because we know when we go to sell, we will definitely get it back.

Just one big piece of advice for new home buyers, pay attention to your taxes!! We found gorgeous homes in our low price range, but taxes were insane!! Taxes alone would have added an extrra $600 a month to our mortgage. It was not worth it!! Now, we live in the best school district, but our taxes are only an extra $100 month added to our mortgage!! So, just keep that in mind, because I defintiely didnt at first.

we just bought last yr- we did not go with VA but with a similar program with NFCU-

this is how ours went: we called first USAA and the NFCU- and applied for loans thru both of them- we got pre-qualified with both banks USAA- for 245,000 dollars and NFCU for 235,000.
we then looked at rates ( percentage rates ) they were very close but USAA could not match NFCU - my score was 820 and DH's 810-
our rate is 6.25.

back track for a second: when we were looking at buying- I was going to be unemployed at the time of purchase- so they would only consider dh's income-
he was a 1st class with over 12 yrs in-
so our approval was based on one income.

NFCU also based the loan amount on the BAH rate for the area.

we found a house for 189,000 and put 1800 dollars down for earnest money-
we did not put anything else ( no down payment).
our seller paid 100% of closing costs- over 9,000 dollars and after prepaids we got 400 of our earnest money back at closing.

our house was new and NFCU was an approved lender so they paid all the closing costs!!
if would have went with USAA they would have only paid about 2500-3000 of the closing costs.

with the mortgage- insurance and taxes our payment is 1431 a month- our BAH is 1471.


I want to add: we did have 45,000 dollars saved to buy this house- but we decided to put that money into the house by adding a screen room- landscaping, fence, gutters, paint and new furniture- we also needed all the lawn care stuff that went along with taking care of your own yard.
we still have some of that money left sitting in our money market- we are planning on putting in a tankless water heater and granite counter tops in the kitchen. really it seema with buying a house it always needs something!!!

thanks this helps a lot.