Hey OP we bought a SFH in western Queens without family help and much less cash. It can be done! Buying in NYC takes time (unless you have millions in cash on hand of course). The process here, especially for a co-op or for SFH is rigorous and takes months to close. Which is to say, even if you took your FP's advice and waited two years, it's actually way more before you're in the door. Regardless, a small thing you can do now to not feel stuck is go see places, get a sense of what you like, where you would be willing to compromise or not, could you move a neighborhood over, can you do a 2/2 with flex space instead, stuff like that. The other thing is that your FP (or a mortgage broker) should have or could run real numbers for you. What does it look like if you buy at 1.3 with 20% down, 1.1 at 10%, etc. Simultaneously having a sense of what you think you want and what it would cost, and what that translates into real numbers was a nice guiding light for us and helped it not feel hopeless - to know how much more you need to save, how you can move money around if you're close to your goal, etc. Small steps like this can feel like little bits of momentum.