July 1, 2017

Down Payments Are Dropping. Is That a Good Thing?

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This story has been making the rounds:

For first-time home buyers, the challenge of coming up with a 20% mortgage down payment is often difficult enough to keep them out of the market. But the fact is, the 20% down payment is all but dead — and has been for quite some time, especially for first-time buyers.

….More than 70% of noncash, first-time home buyers — and 54% of all buyers — made down payments of less than 20% over at least the last five years, according to the National Assn. of Realtors….But the association’s research finds few adults ages 34 and younger (just 13%) realize they can buy a house with a down payment of 5% or less.

….The “traditional” 20% down payment may become obsolete, even among big lenders. Brian Moynihan, chief executive of Bank of America, told CNBC in May that lowering the down payment requirement to 10% from 20% “wouldn’t introduce that much risk but would help a lot of mortgages get done.”

The answer to this problem, apparently, is “correcting consumer misconceptions” and pitching ever lower down payments to make up for the fact that home prices are spiking. And maybe that’s a good idea. I don’t know where the ideal point is for average down payments. But I will offer up the chart below as something to study. In the early aughts, down payments averaged around 8 percent and things were fine. Then they started going down. Then they started plummeting. This was telling us something, but by the time we crossed the 5 percent Rubicon it was too late.

We’re not there yet, and maybe we won’t get there. Maybe 5 percent isn’t really a warning sign after all. I’m not sure I want to find out, though.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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