25% of your take home pay

Do you know of anything like this in Boston?

Montgomery County has programs like this, too. Search for MPDUs (moderately priced dwelling units.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you're making 35k you cannot afford a $250k house.

Agreed. That is over 8 times your salary, and you are talking about not putting down any down payment? No way.

What you could do, however, is look into affordable housing homeownership programs offered by various municipalities. If you can qualify, and get chosen, these are like winning a lottery in my view.

Many municipalities are requiring developers to incorporate some affordable units, which can be buy or rent.

Stonebridge Manor in Falls Church is a $ Million dollar new development, but some $100,000 range units are included there as part of a program. I doubt any are still available.

Arlington just announced a new program, $500,000 in county funds designated for down payment assistance for 10-15 low income families. Could be ~$50k in down payment assistance each. Low-income is defined as making under $60k as a single person, under $68k for two people, and varying levels if you have lots of kids. This program was announced within the past two weeks so I'm sure they're taking applications still.

The District of Columbia has various programs too.

If you are low income and can research these programs and get picked, it sounds like a windfall. Good luck.

Anonymous wrote:If you're making 35k you cannot afford a $250k house.

Agreed. That is over 8 times your salary, and you are talking about not putting down any down payment? No way.

If you're making 35k you cannot afford a $250k house.

I am not the OP (Sorry to hijack your post OP) but I'm the PP that asked about down payments/FHA.
I'm in Boston and many smaller/starter homes in the suburbs are $250,000-$300,000.
The smart thing to do is save enough for 20% down payment, but I still like to know what my options are.
I have done research on FHA loans, but anyone with experience know the ins and outs? Does everyone qualify for them? If I am only making $35,000/year, does that mean I probably won't qualify for ANY type of loan?

Thanks

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, if I was interested in a house around $250,000.. I would need around $8700, plus an extra X amount for fees, closing costs, etc..?
And that's if I qualified for an FHA loan?

Yes, but kind of a moot point if you live around here, not much on the market for $250k...

yeah, pretty much. For $300,000 you can get a shitty townhouse or condo with insane monthly condo fees.

Prices are so very high around here, I can hardly believe it, and I have lived here awhile. 250K is basic for around here. Our mortgage is less than 2X our gross, only one person working. It is still a pain to pay it, as we make varying amounts. Once you get into the larger numbers, you think, if something happened could I find 4k a month to pay for the house? Or move out? There are many other things that call out for your money, but a lot depends on your age, job, debts.

Anonymous wrote:So, if I was interested in a house around $250,000.. I would need around $8700, plus an extra X amount for fees, closing costs, etc..?
And that's if I qualified for an FHA loan?

Yes, but kind of a moot point if you live around here, not much on the market for $250k...

We have a high income and still didn't go above 2.25 times our HHI- and that's with today's interest rates. We max our retirement accounts and save for college, but with two in private school, we're stretched pretty thin. I think it would be insane for anyone to take on something 4-5x their HHI unless they have non-income related wealth.

I'm OP and NOT the person asking the down payment questions. We're putting 20% down, not doing FHA

Yup, figure 3% of purchase price for closing costs, plus down payment.

So, if I was interested in a house around $250,000.. I would need around $8700, plus an extra X amount for fees, closing costs, etc..?
And that's if I qualified for an FHA loan?

You need a downpayment of at least 3.5%, that's the minimum for an FHA loan.