You may still need 3.5% down, and there are income limits on the FHA program. It doesn't fix the problems with high housing prices, either.

3.5% down is not ridiculous if you are being realistic about what you can afford as a first time purchase (and certainly better than 20%).

And as for income: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/fha-loan-requir...

I don't think you got the point of this article. Maybe read it again?

I was replying to the parent who said that getting a 20% down payment is a big obstacle. Maybe read the comment in context of the discussion again?

How much was your total mortgage? Because housing prices have gone up dramatically in the last 15 years, and the math that worked back then (in terms of total mortgage amount, monthly payments, etc) doesn't work anymore today for a lot of people.

We bought a fixer upper (borderline tear-down) for roughly 2x my income at the time (and then sold it for 2x after 5 years after fixing it up). But just for argument's sake, let's say you buy a house (or apartment) for $400k, which you can absolutely do in DC (for example):

https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/?searchQueryState=%7B%... (hopefully that abysmal URL still works for you).

$400,000 x 3.5% = $14,000. If you can't save a $14k down payment, you probably can't afford the mortgage on that and the associated upkeep anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the housing market. I just wanted to point out the FHA program since it helped me, personally.