Tip for Buying a new Home

I have a few friends who are in the process of buying and/or searching for a new home, so I thought I would start giving some of my money tips for buying any property (house or condo). This is the 2 post I'm writing in my Tips for Buying a home series.

The main one that I did before I bought my first property was to make sure I had a good size down payment. You should have at least 20% to avoid PMI.

PMI is basically insurance for your bank to cover them in case you can't pay your mortgage. The only catch is that YOU pay for this insurance, not the bank. What a racket??? You have to pay for insurance that will only benefit someone else. That's why I made sure I had enough money for at least a 20% down payment.

I also wanted to make sure that my payments were affordable, and I knew that if I put down enough money, my payments would go down, and I wouldn't have to worry about making my mortgage payments. Don't listen to all the talk about 0% down. That's just going to hurt you in the end.