A down payment of at least 20 percent lets you avoid mortgage insurance. To explain how bankers and real estate agents talk about down payments, let’s say you buy a house for $100,000: A 3 percent down payment means that you pay the seller $3,000 and you borrow $97,000. Find a low down-payment mortgage today. With a 20 percent down payment, you would pay the seller $20,000 and you would borrow $80,000. Sometimes you’ll hear a phrase like, “Alex put 20 percent down on the house.” That means that Alex made a 20 percent down payment. The money for a down payment can come from: Your own savings.