Saving to buy a house requires sacrifice. It always has. Prospective home buyers have always had to cut unnecessary spending and stick to a budget until they could come up with enough for a down payment. That hasn’t changed. The amount of time it takes to come up with enough to purchase a median-priced house has, though. In fact, according to a new analysis from the National Association of Realtors’ consumer website, it now takes the typical buyer seven years to save up enough money to buy a house. That’s a significant amount of time but down from its peak. In 2022, it took buyers 12 years. Danielle Hale, the website’s chief economist, says there’s been improvement, but it can still be a struggle. “Although conditions have improved since 2022, today’s timeline shows that saving for a home takes meaningfully longer than it did before the pandemic, especially in high-cost markets,” Hale said. In 2019, the typical buyer’s down payment was just under $14,000. Now, it’s more than double that. By the third quarter of this year, the typical down payment reached $30,400. (source)
