Understanding the concept A Real estate loan (also known as mortgage) is the money that you borrow from someone (a financial institution i.e. a mortgage lender) for the purpose of buying a property. The real estate loan generally covers a part of your purchase price and the remaining portion has to be paid by you upfront i.e. as down payment. The amount (i.e. the percentage of total purchase price) that you have to pay as down payment is dependent on a number of factors and you can generally reduce it to even 5% by going for mortgage insurance. FHA and VA loans (i.e. mortgage insurances through FHA and VA) reduce the down payment requirement on real estate loan even further. Whatever you borrow from the mortgage lender as real estate loan needs to be paid back to the mortgage lender over a period of time (and, of course, you will also need to pay appropriate interest on that real estate loan).
