The Watering Hole

I've finally sold my home in Alabama. I live in Atlanta now. I'm about to move to Concord or Charlette, NC.

My question is this.

We all know the housing market is fucked. It will probably never fully recover.

I'm fixing to purchase a home. In the next 5 months or so. I have amased a good bit of cash in the last few years, saved it. I want to purchase a home in the $150k ballpark and I have 20+% to put down when I purchase.

The probem is, I'm fighting back and forth with myself on whether or not to put that much down. I can still purchase with 5% down. The reason is that I'm building up a decent amount of cash right now and hate like hell to put most or all of it down on a home. The job market is fragil, something could happen, etc., and it's real nice having that security blanket of cash in the bank in case I need it. (Lose a job or whatever. )

My first thought is not to put more down than I have to but I guess common sense says to put down at least 20% for all the abvious reasons.

But if something happens with my job or whatever, and I put this money down, I'm fucked and have to panic if something bad happens. My job is fine right now. their pleased with my performance and like me and all that stuff. But this is a crazy time and anything could happen.

So, what do you guys think or suggest? I wouldn't be asking this question if the circumstances were different, but.....

Well, coming from someone who had two houses stolen because all of his money was put into them, I'd say either buy whatever you can afford to pay 100% on or put as little down as you possibly can and make sure you save some of the rest to make payments should you become unemployed!  If I had been psychic, I could have waited and bought a nice little three bedroom house flat out after the collapse...  Instead I'm crashing in a 9x10 bedroom at my business partner's house.

When we brought our house, the question we asked ourselves was "what can we afford to pay if the shit hits the fan?", and worked off of that amount. Our morgage has a redraw facility, so anything above the minimum amount paid in can be withdrawn if needed. Works well for us.

My opinion is probably not be worth much here.  I would consider the context in which one might lose their position.  I do not know what you do so it may not make a difference.  If the context is one where only I would lose the position then the housing market and property values would probably stay intact.  If my going means many go, then the market and values drop as well. In the last case this may mean that if I get in low I lose money and in the process of doing so perhaps they come after my savings anyway.  If you can protect your money and someone else (bank) takes the loss then get in low.

I wouldn't sink all my cash in a home.  You WANT a house payment.  It's financially good for you.  IF you didn't have a house payment your taxes would get pretty retarded.

I'd put the 20% down and the rest in the bank or invest it in other things.  

Also you have to be careful about generalizing the housing market.  I bought my house for under the going rate and when the bottom fell out I didn't lose any value on the house.  The market in my neck of hte woods is very stable because we never got greedy like the rest of the world and started inflating the hell out of the value of our houses.