CHICAGO – Thanks to rising home prices and buyer competition, homebuyers brought higher down payments in the first quarter of 2022 to make their offers more attractive to sellers, offering about twice as much than they did two years ago, according to realtor.com® data.

Buyers, on average, offered a $28,000 down payment in the first quarter. In 2020, down payments averaged $14,000.

The percentage of down payments grew, too. In the first quarter of 2020, buyers averaged a 10.9% down payment on the purchase price compared to 13.1% in the first quarter of this year.

“During the pandemic, people were not spending as much on entertainment and travel and received stimulus payments, which enabled them to put more cash down on homes,” says Hannah Jones, realtor.com economic data analyst.

Several Florida metro areas posted the largest increases in down payments, led by Cape Coral. Down payments there rose by 174.7% from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2022. The average buyer had a down payment of $42,000, according to the realtor.com report.

However, the largest overall down payment averages for a home were in Silicon Valley. San Jose, Calif., averaged a 23.7% down payment of the purchase price of a home – $290,000, according to the report.

Source: “Here’s How Much Cash Homebuyers Are Putting Down to Have Their Offers Accepted,” realtor.com® (May 11, 2022)

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