Attending a wedding? Instead of buying physical gifts, the happy couple would like you to help them with their down payment on a home, a new survey reveals.
According to a new survey by Realtor.com and Censuswide of nearly 2,300 people in the U.S. who recently created a wedding registry, 85% of those who had created a wedding registry in the last 24 months said that they would have preferred money towards a down payment on their home, rather than a physical gift.
Additionally, 80% said that if they could re-do their wedding registry, they would include an option for their wedding guests to direct money toward home-buying costs, such as contributing to a down payment, mortgage, or closing costs.
With mortgage rates near 7%, even paying for a median-priced home — which now costs $391,000 — is an expensive proposition for many newlywed, aspiring homeowners. Newlyweds may be turning to their wedding guests for down payment help because they assume a 20% down payment is required to purchase a home. (Which would be $78,200 on a median-priced home.)
But 20% isn’t always necessary. Some first-time home-buying programs like a Federal Housing Administration loan or Rocket Mortgage’s ONE+ allow buyers to put down as little as 1%.
“We’re seeing buyers get creative with how they cobble together the necessary financials, from tapping into down payment assistance programs, to asking for help from family and friends,” Clare Trapasso, executive news editor at Realtor.com, said.
“Adding a home-buying gift option to a wedding registry is a great way for people to crowd-source these often hard-to-come-by funds,” she added. “It allows their loved ones to celebrate one of the biggest moments of their lives while helping them to achieve homeownership.”
Most newlyweds feel like they’re compelled to register for traditional gifts like dishware, coffee makers and so on, the survey noted.
Wedding guests feel the same way too, the survey said. The majority of people attending weddings — about 80% — said they feel like they should buy a traditional gift for a wedding they attended.
Realtor.com is operated by News Corp subsidiary Move Inc., and MarketWatch is a unit of Dow Jones, also a subsidiary of News Corp.
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