10% Conventional Loan??

[Freefall]

Another newb question...

I always thought "conventional loans" required 20% down. Ive heard of people doing conventionals with 10% or even 5%... Whats the difference betwen that and just going FHA?

[Anonymous]

Shane has an excellent post (now a sticky on the top of the mortgage page) where he goes into great detail about the differences between conventional and FHA loans.

[Bondo]

My credit union goes down to 3% if you have a score of 680 or better,

[BrianB_The_Loan_Professor]

There have been some recent changes that give another option to this and that is the upfront PMI on a conv loan.

The difference without that is - with higher scores you can go conventional with a little more down - avoid the upfront FHA PMI

and have a lower payment since the conventional PMI would be less in some cases than FHA

FHA is a better option for marginal to lower scores - 

the advantage obviously with 20% is having NO MI at all on a conventional loan

The new upfront one time allows a larger upfront and then NO Monthly - this is a popular options if you have great credit and the money upfront

It usually pays for itself within 2-3 years

Hope this helps

Brian

[Freefall]

Thanks for replies! I appreciate it!