Here’s How Much You Have To Save A Month To Put A Downpayment On A Home In 50 Major Cities

For those of us who feel like owning a home in the near future is as realistic as a Tim Burton movie, a piece of us dies when we see the kid from middle school with the perpetual snot in his nose posting photos on Facebook in front of his new home. You laugh out loud when you see the pics, only because laughing is the only way to stifle the cry.

Don’t feel shame.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a liberal arts college in America that teaches a course or seminar on the trials and tribulations of buying your first home. So glad I’m fluent in trigonometry, though. That’s been super helpful.

But the folks at home improvement company Empire Today have done God’s work by conducting a new study to help clarify a particularly trick aspect of home-buying: the down payment. The study determines how much you’d need to save for a downpayment by city, broken down by the age at which you start saving.

The analysis looks at how much you’d need to save per month to buy a house with a standard downpayment (20%) at age 30, starting at ages 22, 25, 27, and 29. It is based on the median home sale price in each major U.S. metro area.

Here’s how much you’d need to save per month to buy a home at age 30 if you start saving at 22, by major city.

Here’s a chart that breaks out the monthly savings by varying ages.

A couple interesting takeaways:

• San Jose, California is the priciest on the list, with a 20% downpayment on a standard down payment coming to a horrifying $236,000 — that means saving $2,458 every month starting at age 22, or saving $19,667 starting at age 29.

• Rochester, New York is the cheapest city on the list, where you’d only have to save $287 per month starting at 22, or $2,295 starting at age 29 to reach the standard $27,540 downpayment

• The average downpayment across all metro areas is $58,803, which would require saving $613 per month starting at age 22, or $4,900 at age 29.