Thank you everyone! This is really helpful and informative! My husband and I are still about 12-15 months out from buying a house and I want to use that time to properly prepare. We currently live overseas and would like to buy a house when we move back to the US. The current rental market in the city we plan to move to in the US is out of control. We are talking $1650 for a studio out of control for the more mustachian parts of town. The buying market isn't as good as we would like, but it's better.
We are currently working on some hair on fire student loans, and while I don't think we'd be able to completely knock those out this year I want most of them gone before we take on a mortgage. And yes, I have read MMMs post on not buying a house until the student loans are GONE but the nytimes rent v buy calculator is so strongly in the buy for this city (and more importantly the part of the city we'd want to be in) that I really do feel like it makes the most sense.
We could easily do 10% down in our current situation - 20% is possible but would probably require either (a) paying the loans down less aggressively for the next year or (b) cashing out some (stock) investments. I guess I shouldn't look at it as "cashing out" some investments but rather moving money from one investment vehicle to another? (Yes I know you can't count on the value of your home increasing, but the same could be said of the stock market). And yes we've considered cashing these out to pay down the student loans, but they have constantly out preformed the interest rate on our loans (6-6.55%), so the investments stay put for now.
All that said - who knows what the housing market and rates will look like in 12-15 months, so all this could change. If anyone has additional thoughts / ideas keep them coming!