Minimum Down Payment

To get the most favorable mortgage terms, most banks will require 20% as the minimum down payment on a home. And having minimums like this makes sense. If a home costs $300,000 and the buyer just put down $60,000, then the bank's risk is relatively low. If after three years the buyer just walks away from the home (they'll have paid down another $10,000 of the principal), then the bank is exposed $230,000 on a home that three years earlier sold for $300,000.

In most markets, that home is now worth meaningfully more than $300,000. That is, if the home just went up with inflation at 2.5-ish%, then it'd be worth $310,000 or so. Even after lawyer costs and commissions paid to realtors and so on, the bank gets its money back. Hence, for low-risk-seeking banks (or creditors of other kinds like for cars, boats, planes, trains, etc.), the lender may require high minimum down payments, just because they are Nellies (nervous ones).