just finance an 80/20 loan and avoid the pmi altogether.

1. at 80 percent you will not have pmi
2. at 80 percent you will not have to escrow your taxes/insurance, which means you can keep your money in what ever high yield account you choose.
3. the slight difference in the higher rate for the second would be less than the earnings that money would have in a high yield account.

or:

some fannie mae programs will let you "buy out" of mortgage insurance altogehter (it makes sense for some people and not for others.)

find out what your credit score is before you start thinking you know what you can do.

my friends, the few the proud the blacked out, are mostly like me and therefore completely useless. the few that have bought a house could give me like one piece of information a person, whereas here i get to pose the question to the lot of you and have a written record for when i forget in ten minutes what we were talking about. this is preferable.

motherfucker when i want to buy some action figures or some tights for a monkey then your phone's gonna ring like it's the end of the month.

oh yea, get pre-approved first for your mortgage amount. Don't waste your time, or your realtors time looking at stuff you can't afford.
Plus you might be able to spend a little more than you think and not have to look at as many dumps.

if you wanna call your unborn child an "action figure" I ain't gonna stop you.