@Rosyrain what I would suggest to get to your dream home is to do this. Buy a lesser home in a very demand area and put some money into doing some upgrades then sell that house or rent it out to get closer to your goal of $30k. I see people do this with condo's all the time. They get older ones and update them and resell in a very short time winding up with a nice windfall. If you are handy you could end up with far more cash flow then working extra jobs. Things like stoves and counter tops are not as hard to manage as some would think. Seriously though, and I do not know what region you are in, the thought of just the taxes on a $400K home makes me cringe. That is an awful lot of house. Rule of thumb 15-20% down plus you have closing costs AND (no one ever mentions this one) you have to reimburse the taxes to the seller, so thats tax x 2 because you need to have an escrow. This is because in most states the taxes are per-paid so that has to go back to the previous owner at closing. You will also need money to cover your homeowners Insurance, and maybe flood insurance (Hurricane, earthquake- all depends where you are regionally) so realistically what you need is probably closer to $65,000 down give or take $7-$10K. The bank will be looking to make certain you have 6 months in reserves to cover mortgage payments in the event one of your becomes UN-employed or under employed. The housing bubble made things easy on one hand if you have enough liquid cash, otherwise you will hit walls. I watched a woman today that owns a respectable condo and has significant savings get turned down on a mortgage because she is retired. No incoming cash flow is a deal breaker in the world of mortgages.
