Down payments

The mortgage industry is stepping up its fight against a bill that would raise the Department of Veterans Affairs' mortgage fees to cover medical costs for Vietnam vets.

Canada's housing agency will spend up to C$1.25 billion ($943 million) over three years to take equity positions in homes bought by first-time buyers, part of a plan by Justin Trudeau's government to make housing more affordable for the youngest voters.

The Federal Housing Administration is moving forward with a long-delayed plan to reduce the term of the home warranty required for high loan-to-value mortgages on new houses.

Millennials make up the largest cohort of homebuyers, but a quarter of them don't even know their credit score, which could be a call for mortgage lenders to help them prepare to enter the housing market.

A city program that helps first-time homebuyers purchase affordable homes has received an additional $3.2 million in grant funding.

Rises in the amount of low down payment loans and private mortgage insurance due to tight affordability led to the most first-time homebuyers since 2006, according to Genworth Mortgage Insurance.

Slower home price growth and cooled mortgage rates could bring buyers out in droves in 2019, according to NerdWallet.

Two Alabama cities lead the nation in several categories according to a study charting the best cities in which to buy a home based on the buyer's occupation.

The number of homeowners participating in an expanding down payment assistance program offered by Wells Fargo and NeighborWorks could top 20,000 this year.

Across rural America, the government shutdown has eliminated one of the best options for low-to-middle income homebuyers, a zero down payment mortgage from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Google avocado-toast restaurants, squeeze into some skinny jeans and be prepared to embrace any number of other cliches about millennials, home real estate pros. They're going to be your prime customers in 2019.

More than one-third of millennials said saving for a down payment is the biggest hurdle to buying a house, but few seem to realize they don't need to put 20% down to get a mortgage, a recent survey found.

The standards for mortgage lending constrained in December, as a drop in conventional credit brought availability to its lowest point since February 2017, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

First-time homebuyers earn $30,000 more than their peers who didn't buy a house, and nearly $12,000 more than the country's overall median household income, highlighting affordability issues in current housing conditions, according to Zillow.

Cash-strapped lenders need to find a way to consistently fund marketing that resonates with more cultures if they really want to be able to replace lost volume by reaching underserved borrowers.

From Ohio to Utah, here's a look at the 12 housing markets with the highest percentage of millennial purchasers.

Rising rents combined with growing housing inventory could lead to increased purchase mortgage originations in the near future.

Putting down 20% of the sales price has been the industry standard when buying a house, but less than half of consumers do that much, according to Zillow.

Intense competition among homebuyers remains as shown by the continual growth of median down payments, according to Attom Data Solutions.

It's in lenders' best interests to show first-time homebuyers how to avoid overextending themselves, which is easy to do in a housing market short on inventory and long on big down payments, the CEO of Freedom Mortgage says.