How long did it take you to save for a home downpayment?

My story isn't typical, at least in my circle of friends. We put down $20,000, after saving for four months.

I had just graduated college. It took me a year to get that college degree - before that I was a SAHM for two years. Before THAT I was in college earning a different degree. I had several part-time jobs while earning the first one, so I would be able to afford staying at home when our first baby was born. We saved up a few thousand dollars to have as a safety net. But dh worked weekends and I did odd things here and there to bring in money. His base salary was $22K, IIRC. We ended up using part of our safety net to pay for dd's daycare while I was in college a bit later. Even though she only attended 8-10 hours a week we paid for full-time care since my schedule was erratic. For years our budget was built around dh's meager salary. So when I got my job, which paid a pretty penny for our parts, everything I made was able to go into the bank. Except for buying a few work outfits and paying for extra gas in the car, every cent I made went into our savings account. Dh probably contributed 2K of that from his paycheck. We did not have to pay any closing costs and we let the previous owners rent back from us so we had extra money for moving-in/new house expenses by the time we took possession.

I should also add that this was about 15 years ago and you could buy a decent, but small, starter home for 100K or less at the time. We went with a REALLY small house so if we ever decided to have another child and want one of us to be at home full-time again, the option would be there. Which we did about two years later. Buying small allowed us to have one parent home for almost a full decade.

I would not be able to do that on my current salary or with my current responsibilities.

We bought our first home 35 years ago with a VA loan, so zero down. BUT, we bought a teeny, tiny house that didn't even have a garage.

We put a lot of sweat equity and all our extra cash into fixing it up. We added a garage, A/C, a fence, landscaping, etc.

Then, when we sold it to buy the house that we wanted to be our forever home, we had enough equity for a sizable downpayment.

we bought our first home from the bank. couple got divorced and husband stopped paying because "she wasn't getting anything". that was in 1994 and dh has $5000 in a savings account.

we started looking for our second house in 2002 and dh was ready to put down $5000, our realtor said minimum of $10,000 so that took us almost a year to come up with as we already had $5000 saved.

i work in real estate and average deposit for an average home in toronto is 25-30k now. i routinely see $50k deposits. i don't know how we could buy a home now, if we weren't already in the market.

the point is, it will just continue to go up so be the smart one and persevere. you will never regret it.

We saved for twenty years to try to get twenty percent. Never got there. My sister told me about FHA and we became homeowners seven years ago with 3 percent down.

We did a rural housing loan where a down payment is not required and there is no PMI.

Our first home was FHA and very inexpensive - we only had to save about $2500 and it took us maybe six months. We were living in an apartment with no kids so it was easier to save back then.

For our two subsequent homes we've used the proceeds from the sale of one as a down payment on the other, and we lived in each home for 7-8 years, so I guess you could say that's how long it took for us to "save" the money.

I really feel for people trying to break into the real estate market now. Trying to save 20% on an entry-level salary would be challenging at best.

It took us almost a decade for our first house. We were young, poor, poorly paid, and I had student debt.

Subsequent houses did not take nearly as long because we had better paying jobs. That was the big difference -- getting to a point in our careers where we made actual money, as opposed to barely above poverty level wages. (And FTR, we both have master's degrees and work in professions. They were just poorly paid professions, hence why we have advised our kids to go into fields with real money in their paychecks.)

Several years. I saved all of my tip money from waitressing, and put leftover change and small bills and gift money away in a shoebox for many  years. 
As soon as DH got his first real job when he was done school, we bought the house we're living in now (that was 4 years ago). I honestly never thought we'd be able to afford to buy a house, as we watched housing prices skyrocket. We ended up having to move to another region in order to buy a house we could afford -- but our mortgage here is a fraction of what we'd be paying in rent or mortgage if we lived where we used to. Unfortunately we had to sacrifice in some areas so we could buy a house, but we needed a bigger house and this one is the one we could afford! 

We bought our first house 24 years ago, about a year and a half after we got married. We knew when we got married that we wanted kids eventually, and that when we did have them, I would be a SAHM. So from the moment we married, we lived on DH's salary alone. We saved every penny of my salary. We already had some savings, but saving my salary built it up fast. We were able to put $20,000 down on our first house. After that we continued to live on his salary and saved mine, so it was easier when I quit when our first child was born 2 years after that.

We didn't, kind of. We had long-term savings but hadn't been planning to buy a house. Then my husband got laid off, we decided to move to a new city, and we bought a house, all in the span of two months. We used my annual bonus from my job for the down payment, and only had to pull about $3000 from our existing savings for closing costs. We bought near the bottom of the market in 2009 and got a great deal.

If we'd saved at our normal rate, it would have taken about two years to save the down payment.

my dh bought some land right out of college with his mom. we bought our house about 6 months before we were married. we sold the property for about 4 times what dh paid for it...and with a bridge loan..that paid for our down payment. we put about 15% down. but nowdays, the junkiest house in the neighborhood is $800,000...so we wouldn't be able to buy today.

It took me two years to save $4500. Turned out I was able to get a mortgage with no down payment but it took every cent of that $4500 to pay the closing costs.

I so, so feel your pain. DH and I have been saving for a couple of years. However, come July we will both be self-employed and the money we've have saved to date will instead be funneled into an emergency fund, given that self-employment is a bit riskier and we want to be prepared. On the plus side, we will have paid off my biggest student loan and his student loans by summer, and be done with daycare payments around the same time, so all of those bills will go into saving for a house. With PMI being so expensive, we don't want to be at less than 10%, and our hope is that we won't have to pay closing costs. We also live in an area with incredibly expensive housing. We got a steal on the house we are renting - it's in an amazing neighborhood with terrific schools. But, we could never afford to buy here - the cheapest homes is this area for 1,200sf 3bed/1 bath start at $650k, and even those are few and far between. It's nuts. We are hoping that we'll have figured out where we want to move to in the next few years where we can buy a more reasonably priced home with decent schools. Barring no major catastrophes, it will probably take us another 3 years to save 10% in cash. We could probably make it work in 1-2 years, but I don't want to pull from our retirement given that we are self-employed, and therefore have no company "match". I want to make sure that is protected as much as possible.

I'm in Ontario as well - and yes, it is a percentage - but what she's saying is the "average" deposit people put down. Although depending on the area of Toronto, 20% down would be WAY more than $25-30K. Even in the small town I live in (about an hour from Toronto) average home prices are $350-400,000, so you are looking at $70,000 minimum.

If  you don't mind paying the CMHC insurance fees, then you can buy with as little as 10% down.