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How much of a down payment do you need to buy a home in Seattle in 2024? Is it 20%? Or could it be less? We’ll explain why you don’t need to come up with a 20% down payment to purchase a home.
One of the most persistent — and damaging — myths about buying a home in Seattle, WA, is that of “the normal 20% down payment.” It is true that lenders need to limit their risk when a loan is for more than 80% of the home’s value.
However, that doesn’t mean you have to come up with 20% or give up. Instead, lenders use a tool known as mortgage insurance to accomplish risk mitigation when they loan more than 80% of the cost of the home.
Let’s visit the world of mortgage insurance and learn what it is — and what it is not.
There is a concept in lending called “protective equity.” You might think of it as “skin in the game,” the investment that keeps a borrower from walking away, but it is also the amount of money (equity) above the loan that will keep the lender from losing money if things were to go bad.
When a lender approves and funds a loan, it looks to the property as security for the loan. The security is typically in the form of a “deed of trust.” This is the legal instrument that allows the lender to foreclose and force the sale of the property to get its money back from a defaulting borrower.
In this respect, it is quite similar to a bank holding a car’s title (the “pink slip”) until their loan has been paid in full. If the borrower stops making the payments on the car, the lender can repossess the car and sell it to get the loan paid off.
If the car sells for a high enough price, the lender gets its money back. If it doesn’t — and this is called a “deficiency” in legal terms — they’ll have to pursue the borrower for the shortfall. Sometimes they can get it, most times they can’t, so they take the loss.
The principle is similar in mortgages. The lender is able to pursue the legal process of foreclosure to get their money back when the borrower stops paying. If the price they can get for the house at an auction doesn’t cover their outstanding loan balance plus past due payments and other expenses, they’ll take a loss. Seattle Mortgage Lenders hate that.
A 20% down payment reassures the bank that if they had to foreclose on the property, the cash put up by the buyer would be enough to protect them. If the buyer wants to put less money down—let’s say 5% — they’ll still approve the loan, but only with some additional protection. That’s where mortgage insurance comes in.
You may have seen the term “PMI,” which stands for Private Mortgage Insurance. This means that a private company (not a government agency) provides protection to the lender. We should also note that the term PMI is not accurate for all types of loans with small down payments.
(There are government-insured FHA loans insured by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), so their insurance can’t properly be called “private.” The correct term for FHA insurance is “MI” or “MIP,” for Mortgage Insurance Premium.)
Whether private or not, all mortgage insurance works in the same way. If a lender has to foreclose because of the borrower’s default, the property ultimately will be sold at auction, called a Trustee’s Sale. If the sale does not bring enough money to pay off the delinquent loan plus all the associated fees, costs, and expenses, the mortgage insurance company steps in to cover the lender’s loss.
While some people think of a lender’s requirement that a borrower pays for mortgage insurance when their down payment is less than 20% as some sort of punishment with no benefit for the borrower, there is a better way to view it. Mortgage insurance is simply an alternative to the large down payment that may be out of reach for many borrowers. It allows the lender to extend a loan to buyers with smaller down payments because mortgage insurance limits their risk.
The majority of home purchases involve some form of mortgage insurance. The cost of PMI depends primarily on two things: the loan to value ratio (the loan amount as a percentage of the home’s value) and the borrower’s credit score. Both factors affect the lender’s risk.
PMI rates vary somewhat between companies and adjust based on home value appreciation expectations, but you can currently expect to see a rate of about .30% for a 90% loan and a credit score of 760 or higher. The same loan for a borrower with a 620 score (the minimum acceptable score for a conventional loan) will carry a premium of 1.1%. For a $500,000 home, this would mean a monthly premium between $113 and $413, respectively.
At Sammamish Mortgage, we currently has a source for reduced PMI, which we would love to discuss with you.
On a conventional loan, a borrower can remove PMI when they have enough equity. While it’s a common assumption that PMI is always removed when you reach 80% LTV, there is more to it than that. While a lender may tell you upfront that they will remove PMI once you reach 80%, their policies can and will change if the house market takes a downturn.
Therefore, it is important to know when a lender is required to remove PMI. Our PMI webpage (PMI Removal) has specific government guidelines outline when a lender is required to remove PMI.
FHA loans also carry mortgage insurance, but it works in a slightly different way. Today, there is an initial up-front premium of 1.75%. It is added to the base loan amount, so the buyer doesn’t have to pay out of pocket. There is also a monthly mortgage insurance premium (MIP) of anywhere from 0.45% to 1.05% of the mortgage loan amount, which is based on the down payment and loan term.
The insurance premium for an FHA loan will be the same for any credit score — and the adjustments applied to the interest rate will be less severe than for conventional loans. Unlike PMI for conventional loans, FHA insurance for the minimum down payment remains in place for the entire term of the loan. A borrower can remove it only by refinancing into a conventional loan.
The message you should take away is that buying a home in Seattle, WA, does not require the large down payment that many people think it does. There are plenty of loan programs available today requiring down payments as low as 3%, so becoming a homeowner might just be closer than you think.
Will you need mortgage financing to buy a home in Seattle? We can help. Sammamish Mortgage has been serving buyers across the Pacific Northwest since 1992. We offer a wide variety of mortgage programs with flexible qualification criteria to borrowers all across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Colorado. Please contact us today with any financing-related questions you have.
Whether you’re buying a home or ready to refinance, our professionals can help.
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No Obligation and transparency 24/7. Instantly compare live rates and costs from our network of lenders across the country. Real-time accurate rates and closing costs for a variety of loan programs custom to your specific situation.