When purchasing a home, one of the critical pieces of information is the amount of a down payment you’re providing. For some potential homebuyers, the down payment funding comes from the sale of their ...

When you buy a home with a mortgage and use a gift of cash or equity toward that purchase, you need to get a gift letter from the donor. A gift letter documents where the gift comes from and confirms ...

Julia Kagan is a financial/consumer journalist and former senior editor, personal finance, of Investopedia. Ebony Howard is a certified public accountant and a QuickBooks ProAdvisor tax expert. She ...

What Is a Gift Letter? A gift letter is a piece of legal, written correspondence explicitly stating that money received from a friend or relative is a gift. The most common use of gift letters is when ...

Let's say you're ready to buy your first home — and take advantage of mortgage rates that are finally starting to drop — but your bank account isn't. If you don't have the down payment money, loved ...

Q. A relative needed help with the down payment on a home, so I gave him $25,000. I signed a gift letter to the lender. Shortly after the home closed, a different relative paid me back the $25,000.

A gift letter for a mortgage confirms that some or all of the borrower’s down payment money is a gift that doesn’t need to be repaid and that the giver isn’t involved in the purchase or ownership of ...