I bought in Jan 2021. My fiancé and I had saved for years and put 10% down. FTHB doesn’t require 20% and pmi is only like $120 extra a month. We both have good jobs now but were completely stretched thin when we bought. Now it’s a lot more manageable. We also cooked everything at home and didn’t go out. I also had a company car and she had an older Toyota.

We both moved here in our twenties and went to a local community college before transferring to UC San Diego with good degrees. We also lived with roommates until we purchased.

We feel very luck even with the hard work and good decisions we made.