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The 8-Year Down Payment Wait in the DC Area

  • October 23rd 2018

by UrbanTurf Staff

The 8-Year Down Payment Wait in the DC Area: Figure 1
A home in DC for sale for $390,000.

These days, it takes a bit longer to save for a home down payment in the DC region than it did twenty years ago. 

Zillow has found that it takes homebuyers almost 8 years to save for a 20 percent down payment in the DC region. This calculation is based on a median home price of $399,000. In 1998, when the typical home cost $158,100, it took 5.4 years to save for a down payment.

"Despite the booming job markets of the past decade, buyers saving down payments now – mostly first-time buyers, 61 percent of whom are millennials, according to the Zillow Group Consumer Housing Trends Report – need even more time to accomplish what previous generations did," the report states. "First-time buyers say that 46 percent of their down payments come from savings, compared with 35 percent for repeat buyers."

While 8 years may seem like a long time, the period it takes to save for a down payment in the  DC area isn't that much longer than the national average, which comes in at 7.2 years.  

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the-8-year-down-payment-wait-in-the-dc-area/14605.

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