Down Payment Statistics (2026)

The median first-time buyer put down 10% in the year to June 2025. That matches the highest share recorded since 1989, and it is half the figure most first-time buyers plan around.

Repeat buyers put down a median of 23%, the highest since 2003.

Twenty percent is not a requirement. It is the level at which a conventional lender generally stops requiring private mortgage insurance, which is a real cost and a different thing from a rule about whether you can buy.

The first-time figure rose to a level not seen since 1989. The repeat figure rose to a level not seen since 2003. They moved in the same direction in the same year.

That is not a market becoming more generous. It is a market selecting harder, admitting buyers who arrive with more capital and turning away those who do not.

The first-time buyer share fell to 21% over the same period, the lowest since the series began in 1981, which is the other half of the same story.

59% of first-time buyers used personal savings for the deposit. 26% used financial assets such as a 401(k), IRA or stocks. 22% used a gift or loan from a friend or relative.

NAR specifically notes that in past years' reports a gift or loan was more common among first-time buyers than financial assets. That ordering has now flipped.

For anyone holding investments, this is the finding that matters most on this page. A deposit funded from a portfolio makes the purchase date dependent on a market, which is exactly the situation short-horizon money is supposed to avoid.

Money needed within a few years generally should not carry equity risk, because a decline in the wrong quarter cancels the purchase it was saved for.

Drawing a deposit from a 401(k) or IRA has its own consequences: retirement accounts have withdrawal rules, and contribution room used and then withdrawn cannot be replaced.

The Roth IRA is the partial exception, because contributions can be withdrawn at any age without tax or penalty, and IRAs allow up to $10,000 lifetime toward a first home as an exception to the additional tax. Both still cost you retirement space permanently.

30% of repeat buyers financed nothing at all, and NAR describes the all-cash share as being at an all-time high.

A cash buyer needs no appraisal condition, no financing contingency and no rate lock, which makes their offer materially stronger at the same price.

That is the mechanism by which a first-time buyer with a 10% deposit loses a bidding contest to somebody bidding the same number, and it is a competitive effect rather than a pricing one.

Nearly 90% of VA-backed loans are made with no down payment, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. For eligible service members and veterans that is the single largest zero-deposit channel in the market.

USDA loans, for designated rural areas and within income limits, can also require nothing down.

Both are eligibility-gated rather than credit-gated in the usual sense, so they either apply to you or they do not, and it is worth checking rather than assuming.

At a $400,000 purchase price, 10% is $40,000 and 20% is $80,000. At $600,000 the same percentages are $60,000 and $120,000.

The gap between the two columns is what a buyer is really deciding about when they choose whether to wait for a larger deposit.

Closing costs are additional and due at the same time, which is the line most first-time buyers underestimate because it does not appear in any of the headline percentages.

Below roughly 20% equity, a conventional lender generally requires private mortgage insurance, which is a monthly cost that protects the lender rather than the borrower.

A smaller deposit also means a larger loan, so both the monthly payment and the total interest are higher, and lenders frequently price the rate itself off the loan-to-value ratio.

Against that, waiting to reach 20% means paying rent for longer while prices and rates do whatever they do. There is no universally correct answer, which is why the median is 10% rather than 20%.

Conventional and FHA loans both allow low single-digit down payments for qualifying buyers, and the exact minimums are programme rules set by the agencies and the government-sponsored enterprises rather than statistics.

The figures that circulate for those minimums could not be confirmed in a primary agency document during research for this page, so they are not asserted here.

The authoritative places to check are the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's loan options pages, HUD for FHA and the Department of Veterans Affairs for VA loans. A lender will quote the current minimum for your situation, which is what actually governs.

Mortgage interest rates averaged 6.69% over the survey period from July 2024 to June 2025.

At that level the deposit decision changes character, because the interest saved by borrowing less is larger than it was in a 3% environment.

It also raises the opportunity cost of holding a large deposit in cash while waiting, which is the tension every saver in this position is managing.

Among first-time buyers, 50% are married couples, 25% are single women and 10% are single men.

Buyers who succeeded cite high rent and student loans as the two foremost costs holding back their saving, with childcare a steady additional barrier.

The median first-time buyer is now 40 years old, which is the clearest single indicator of how long the deposit now takes to assemble.

These are medians from a survey, not a census. NAR mailed 173,250 questionnaires in July 2025 and received 6,103 usable responses from primary-residence buyers, an adjusted response rate of 3.5%.

The confidence interval is plus or minus 1.25% at the 95% level.

The survey covers primary residences only, so investment and vacation purchases are excluded, and it describes buyers who completed a purchase rather than everybody who tried.

Every figure here describes people who succeeded in buying. The survey has nothing to say about the larger group who saved, bid and did not get a house.

A 10% median deposit among successful first-time buyers is therefore not evidence that 10% is enough. It is evidence that 10% was enough for the people who got in.

With the first-time share at a record low, the selection effect behind these medians is stronger than it has ever been in the history of the series.

Down payment medians, cash shares and funding sources are from the NAR 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, published 4 November 2025 and covering transactions from July 2024 to June 2025.

The share of VA-backed loans made with no down payment is from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Dollar tables are arithmetic applied to the surveyed percentages and are labelled as such rather than presented as survey findings.