I have been setting savings goals and funneling money from each pay check into a savings account for each of my two goals: having a wedding and buying a house. I was reading a finance book that suggested a savings goal for a wedding, so I am able to estimate about how much I should save for that.
But for a house I have no idea how much is appropriate to save. I know I would prefer to have a house 5 years from now or sooner. I know that I probably will move across the country some time between now and then, and that the houses in the area I'm looking to move to vary between $300k to $800k depending on what town you want to be in. I know it's better to have 20%, but that you can put a deposit down at 10%.
Should I go crazy trying to save for 20% of an 800k house when all of this is so tenuous, or should I just save what I can each month? How do you guys choose how much to save when things are so up in the air?
Hi all,
I'm considering buying a house in the next 12-24 months, and have been building nest egg for a downpayment. The goal is to have $45-50k saved for a 20% down payment ($200k+ home price), with some additional saved for closing costs, etc.
Beyond that, what is realistic to have remaining in cash savings? I'd prefer to not tap into my brokerage account (non-retirement). My thought process is to try and reserve the $15k I have sitting in a 3% checking account, as that as a money-making device is worthwhile. Realistically, that would be my primary emergency fund post-downpayment, with maybe $5-10k sitting in other "buckets" for other savings goals (car, pets, etc.)
Is $15k a reasonable emergency fund for a new house? I'm in a good position income-wise, with $110k / year, so my cash savings would ideally bounce back quite quickly to pad that emergency fund. Overall, just trying to gauge when an ideal time, financially, would be to pull the trigger.
Posted byu/[deleted]10 months ago
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Hey Melbournians, how much money did you guys have saved up before you bought your first house in Melbourne? A lot of people I know in their 20s are buying houses, and it makes me wonder how the hell they are able to do so when the housing market is so expensive right now. I don’t wanna ask anyone face to face because money is a very personal matter, but I am very curious as to how people can afford it.
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My wife just completed her Masters program and immediately got a job that she loves. The trouble is that it's just over an hour away. We've started looking at houses in that area but last night she saw our bank account and is scared we don't have enough money to buy a house. Is she right, am I jumping the gun?
We currently have $22k in the bank and only have student loan debt ($100k+). With her new job we'll be saving $5k a month. The houses we're looking at will need about $12k down. So if in two months (closing date is 60 days out from offer date) we put $12k down, we'd have roughly $20k in the bank which is about 5 months of bills. I'm comfortable with that, but she's not. Should we be waiting longer to have a larger cushion?
I am in a good spot financially, I've reached the end of all my loans, and have started saving. How much do I really need to save before starting to look at houses? I live in Pennsylvania and have heard about many incentives to help new homeowners. 20% is the standard most people will say but with PMI, and first-time home buyer programs how much REALLY do I need to save? I except the home price to be about 220k plus or minus depending on how close to town we end up.
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I just bought a house in Flevoland, the market is oversaturated so a makelaar is very much necessary if you want to get a house within a year. Otherwise you call a house that just got out online and already hear it's full.
How much money you need to save depends on the market. For an average home you need about 10k in kosten koper. It's lower if you don't have a makelaar and finance advisor who helps with the hypotheek. (The 10k is probably lower for you since transfer tax is no longer a thing for <35 year olds and new home owners)
Then come the market aspect. I know that in Almere and Lelystad for a house on the market for 200.000 you can expect you bid 40k extra to get a chance. That was about as much as we bidded on the house we wanted.
But Den Helder, Groningen, Limburg, Zeeland, Enschede, Hengelo seems to be the cheapest places to currently live. Someone I know offered less that the asking price for his Limburg house and won.
So how much should you save for an average house?
Money for renovations: 0-20.000.
Kosten koper: 10.000-15.000.
Bidding: 0-60.000 (depending on the market and price category, hypotheek does not cover anything over market price, which is why you need to save for that).
Edit: i forgot to mention how long the process took me.
1 months deciding where to live.
2 months finding a makelaar and discussing whether our wishes were doable.
5 months of visiting houses for sale and places multiple bids before finding a house.
1 months of arranging hypotheek, things went really messy at the banks side and we almost lost the house from that. The stress made us need a week off work to recover 😟.