First time buyers...

[OhShitItsAMouse]

What deposit did you put on your first home?

It’s a nosy question I know, but I’m debating whether to put a 5 or 10%

Putting a 10% down means the mortgage payments only reduce by about £50 per month. So is there any upsides to putting a bigger deposit? Or should I hold onto my money and put a 5%?

Will the house need much spent on it when you move in? It’s usually better to put down as much of a deposit as possible, but if that £50 a month is the difference between getting a new bathroom or something, I’d keep back some money.

I put down a smaller deposit because my house needed a lot of work (boiler, windows, etc) and the loan repayments would have been much more then the slightly higher mortgage payment.

We live out in the sticks, bought a house for £140k and put down just over 18k deposit. We didn't do it by percentage, just saved and DP had some inheritance.
Our mortgage is well under £600 a month.
£50 off a month might not be a massive amount, but every little helps.

See, I know £50 a month isn’t to be sniffed at, but I’m wondering whether it’s better to keep a few grand in the bank instead of putting it all down as a deposit and ‘only’ saving the £50 a month.

Is there any other attractive reasons for a bigger deposit?

Not really, only the fact you've paid off more at the beginning so monthly payments are lower and you might nit have to have your mortgage as long.
We decided to put a larger deposit down as we prefer to have lesser monthly payments and get some more savings as we earn, rather than less deposit and bugger monthly payments which would effect us longer od you see what I mean.

But other than that, if the money you have is all that you have saved I am completely with the people who want to save some back. We didnt buf I wish we had in a way. For all the things that need doing and a bit of a back up fund can really make a difference.

Thanks @IAmNotPatientOrPregnant
If the monthly savings were bigger then I’d slap down the 10% without another thought... but then like you say, it’s a bigger chunk paid off from the start if I do 🤔

5% on both. Was a poor first time buyer the first time, and in negative equity the second : so had to buy ourselves out of first mortgage and find another deposit again!

We have been looking at a few places and depending how much we decide to spend will put between 50% and 25% down as a deposit. We only plan to use about two thirds of our savings and hold the rest back, but could go lower if we get somewhere less expensive.

We have left buying our first place fairly late though as we have moved around a lot for work but have also been able to save up a decent deposit.

We have been thinking of taking a shorter term rather than lower repayments.

Once your deposit gets bigger the interest rates offered drop. We have been told by our broker they should be able to get around 1.7% if we put a 40% deposit down.

If you put down a 10% deposit, you are likely to pay a lower interest rate than for 5%, so do it if you can manage it at all.

£50 pm might not sound like a lot, but it is £15k over 25 years, obviously reduced by the extra deposit you have put down.

We are about to go for a 95% nortgage. We are keeping the rest behind as savings as it would leave us with nothing when we move in and if anything broke or needed doing we would be screwed.

Also, mortgage broker gave us good advice and said if we take the 95%, try and overpay as much as you can and don't take more than a 2 year fixed rate. Then after 2 years remortgage and go down to a 90% (or less) mortgage with better rates. That made more sense to us to keep a small pot of savings aside.

We went with 25% deposit but spent a lot of time humming and haa'ing over 20 or 25. For us, it made a bit of difference on the rate which resulted in us going for a shorter term. We're going to be just over 50 when our mortgage gets paid off. The next rate jump isn't until 40% which wasn't going to happen so it felt good pushing it to as best as we could manage.

We also had the benefit of it being a new build which isn't ready until Christmas so we've got extra time to save up for things like flooring and furniture, and we won't need to do any major replacing bathrooms or kitchens in the first few years!

5% so we had money to buy everything we needed. Once you're in,it gets harder to want to spend your money on the 'boring' house stuff, whereas when youCre moving in its all part of it

We put down 20% (500k house, 100k deposit) - we just wanted as much off as possible really.