Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Should I take out a bigger mortgage, or pay a greater cash deposit?
At a minimum, I would save 20-30k, because you need to have both a safety net and some money for home repairs.  Very few people move into a house and then do zero repairs - painting, usually, at a minimum, and there's almost always something that comes up pretty soon after.  Even if you're buying a condo, you'll want to be sure you can fix anything that needs fixing within that first year or two. Beyond that, you have to decide based on your risk tolerance and your other details, like your income.  Taking a smaller mortgage means a guaranteed 3% to 4% return, right now.  That's not quite what you'll probably get on the market over the long term, but how did your investments do last year?  My 401(k) was down slightly...  In order to do better than that 3-4%, you're going to have to invest in stocks (or ETFs or similar), meaning you could have 10+% swings potentially year over year, which if that's your only (extra) 50k might be more than you can tolerate. If you're very risk tolerant and mostly looking to make money over the long term, then it may be worth it to you.  But if a larger mortgage makes it harder to pay the monthly payments (a meaningfully smaller buffer), or if your job is such that you might end up having to sell those investments at a loss to cover your mortgage for a few months because you (didn't make enough|got laid off|etc.), then you may want the smaller mortgage to make that less of a risk (though still setting aside the safety net in something minimally risky).