Abby Badach Doyle
speaker
246 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 13 Aug
Abby Badach Doyle’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Inventory tends to dip seasonally in the winter.
So in January, you might have fewer homes to choose from.
But that also means that you can take your time, like you're less likely to run into bidding wars or rush deadlines for offers, things like that.
Another benefit to house hunting in January is that movers and contractors tend to be available and they tend to be cheaper.
So you can save some money there, too.
And, you know, at the end of the day, like winter can really work in your favor if you know how to work it.
You know, on the flip side, as a seller, like if you can wait to list till spring, it might be worth it to wait until that traditional home buying season.
If you're listing your home in the spring, there's more demand.
You're probably going to see a little bit more action.
But, you know, if you want to sell your home this year, winter is a great time to meet with a listing agent to tackle some of those cleaning projects, some of those repairs and get your home ready to sell.
Thank you for having me.
The very first step is to understand what monthly mortgage payment you can afford. And NerdWallet's Home Affordability Calculator is a really helpful first step here. So another general rule of thumb is the 2836 rule. That says to spend no more than 28% of your pre-tax income on housing costs. and then no more than 36% on all debts.
So that includes your mortgage, your car payment, student loans, things like that. So once you have that comfortable monthly payment, you can play with different down payment amounts to see which home prices would be affordable, which prices are a stretch, and what's out of your price range entirely.
So there's two kind of prongs to this, right? First is the financial readiness, but then there's also, you know, the emotional readiness of are you ready to settle down? Are you ready to stay in the same place for a while? So that 28-36 rule is a really useful percentage guideline because
You can back into your budget based on like what your household budget and the numbers that you're working with right now. So you definitely don't want to stretch your budget more than what's comfortably affordable. You know that term house poor. But if you're able to make the numbers work with what you know about your cash flow, it is possible even with home prices being what they are.
That is such a myth, Sean, that it's like the most popular home buying myth that we encounter on the team. So you don't need to put 20% down to buy a house. And actually, the median down payment for first-time homebuyers, according to the National Association of Realtors, is only 9%.
And even below that, some loans have a minimum of 3% for conventional loans, 3.5% is the minimum for FHA loans, and some loans like USDA and VA mortgages don't require a down payment at all. So definitely don't need 20% down to buy a house. To share a personal story, when we bought our house last year,
We expected to make a larger down payment, but we bought a house that we wanted to do some renovations right away. So we only put down 5% so that we would have more money in the bank for those renovations. So we tackled a minor kitchen remodel. We remediated some knob and tube wiring and having that cash in the bank was super helpful. So
The rule of thumb with down payments is larger down payment means a smaller monthly payment, but a smaller down payment leaves more cash in the bank for other stuff. So it's really about what's most comfortable for you.
For sure. And then you're in there, your foot's in the door, and you're building that equity.
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