The loan officer kept a dish of butterscotch candies on the corner of her desk. By the end of our hour with her on Tuesday afternoon, Tyler had eaten four of them and I had filled two pages of a yellow legal pad. These are those notes, cleaned up so they make sense to someone who wasn't sitting in that little office at the bank in town.
We weren't applying for anything. We just wanted to understand how this works before we start looking at houses for real. She didn't pull our credit and didn't ask us to sign anything. One thing first: I'm a pharmacy tech, not a mortgage person. This is what one loan officer told us about our situation in March 2026. Rules and programs change. Go sit at your own bank desk and ask someone who does this for a living.
Down payments, closing costs and USDA loans
I grew up hearing you need 20 percent down to buy a house. She said that's what you need to skip mortgage insurance on a conventional loan, not what you need to buy one. Some first-time buyers can put down as little as 3 percent, and 5 percent is common. Below 20 percent, you pay private mortgage insurance every month until you build up enough equity. It's an extra cost, but it's not a wall.
We did the math right there on the legal pad, using $140,000 as an example, since most of the starter houses we've been watching around Macon are listed between $120,000 and $170,000.
- 3 percent down on $140,000: $4,200
- 5 percent down on $140,000: $7,000
- Closing costs at about 3 percent of the price: $4,200
- 5 percent down plus closing costs: $11,200
Then she told us about a kind of loan I'd never heard of. The USDA, which I had only ever connected with farms and food labels, backs home loans in rural areas. She pulled up the eligibility map, and Macon is on it. A USDA loan doesn't require a down payment at all. Household income has to be under a limit for the county, and she said we're under it. The house has to be your main home, and there are fees: about 1 percent up front, which can usually be rolled into the loan, and a smaller yearly one. You still pay closing costs. She also said not to fall in love with any one program until we have an actual house, since the house itself has to qualify too.
Why our credit card history mattered
She asked what we thought our credit scores were. I told her the truth: mine was 662 last March, and Tyler's was 701. That was before we paid off a $2,140 credit card in ten weeks last spring.
She said the two biggest things are paying every bill on time and how much of our available credit we're using. Paying that card down to zero and keeping it there helps on both counts. She also told us what not to do before buying: don't close that old card, don't open new ones, and don't finance a couch or a fridge on store credit.
She explained debt-to-income, too. My $112 student loan payment counts. Rent doesn't, since it goes away when the mortgage starts. Both of our vehicles are paid off, which she said makes her job easier.
Why we raised our goal
Our tax refund came in on March 6, $2,540, and all of it went to the house fund. The fund was at $22,129.94 when we walked into her office. Our goal has been $25,000 by the end of the year, and on the drive home that number started to look small.
The houses we actually want, three bedrooms we can move into without gutting anything, are closer to $150,000. And almost everything in our range is old. So we redid the math at the kitchen table. Ten percent down on $150,000 is $15,000. Closing costs at about 3 percent are around $4,500. We want about $10,000 set aside for repairs, because an old house is going to need a roof, a furnace or some wiring, probably sooner than we'd like. The last $5,500 covers moving, utility deposits and the appliances a lot of these houses don't come with. That's $35,000.
Why 10 percent when we might put down 5, or nothing at all? A smaller loan means a smaller payment and less mortgage insurance, and we don't want the down payment to eat the repair money. If a USDA loan ends up fitting, the difference just becomes a bigger cushion.
So as of this morning, the goal in the sheet says $35,000 by the end of 2026. That's $12,870.06 to go in a little over nine months. The transfer on the 21st is $502 now, since the $16 we save from raising our car insurance deductible joins it today, and the month-end leftover has been $300. That's about $8,000 by December. The rest has to come from mowing season, the jar and interest. It's a stretch, and we wanted it to be.
She suggested we come back for a pre-approval once we're ready to look seriously, since the letter only stays good for a few months. We're thinking late summer. Until then, we keep saving and we keep that credit card at zero.
