Even though down payments remain an obstacle to prospective homebuyers across the country, affordability conditions have improved significantly in the past three years.
That’s the key takeaway from a Realtor.com report released Monday. The company found that across the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, the typical household in 2025 needs seven years to save for a down payment. That’s down from 12 years in 2022, when the timeline peaked.
But the typical down payment of $30,400 in the third quarter of 2025 was more than double the pre-pandemic figure of $13,900 in Q3 2019.
“Higher home prices and intensified competition have pushed typical down payments higher, at the same time that inflation and rising household expenses have reduced savings rate,” Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said in a statement.
“Although conditions have improved since 2022, today’s timeline shows that saving for a home takes meaningfully longer than it did before the pandemic, especially in high-cost markets.”
The report noted that the time needed to save for a down payment can take decades in certain locations, which effectively prices out large segments of first-time and moderate-income buyers.
Real estate market dynamics are exacerbated by lower household savings rates. Realtor.com said that the average household has saved 5.1% of their income in 2025, below the pre-pandemic rate of 6.5% and much lower than post-pandemic peaks that were driven by government stimulus efforts.
Coastal metros like San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and Boston had the longest timelines to save for a down payment.
In San Francisco, where the median household income topped $132,000, the timeline stood at 36.5 years as the median down payment from January through November was more than $245,000.
At the other end of the spectrum, Realtor.com found that many Southern markets and areas with high utilization of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) loans had the shortest timelines. VA loans don’t have down payment requirements, and some lenders have begun to introduce options that eliminate closing costs.
San Antonio led the way with an average savings timeline of only 1.3 years. The median down payment for a homebuyer there in 2025 was $5,067. Markets like Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville and Houston also had average timelines of less than five years.
“In high-cost markets, the typical down payment alone exceeds a full year of household income,” said Hannah Jones, senior economic research analyst for Realtor.com. “That reality makes homeownership feel unattainable for many buyers, particularly younger households trying to enter the market for the first time.”