The best way to find houses is to give your criteria to a realtor and have them sign you up for MLS listing emails. It's free, although it does involve finding a realtor first. (But that should be your focus anyway.) Sites like Zillow (redfin is better in my opinion) sometimes have outdated or wrong info.

You could also start going to open houses, speaking to realtors there and see who gives you good/knowledgeable vibes.

As for a down payment, there are options that exist outside of the 20% down, like FHA loans or an 80-10-10 loan. Especially with that household income.

If school for kids is a factor, then Princeton, West Windsor, Plainsboro are your best bets (and towns that feed into any of those districts... Cranbury?

If school is not a factor, then avoid those towns due to high property taxes. Or any town with high property taxes.

If you don't want to deal with the house itself and are looking for more of a starter type home, consider a condo/townhouse. Should be cheaper, less to do, and nice way to build up equity. Wife and I did that before moving to a house in the area.

Generally, you need to put down 20%, so if you have 65k total, you are looking at homes in the 300-325 range. Correct?

Most house listings are fed to various sites by NJ's central real estate data base. I don't have any specific realtor recommendations, but I guess any of the better reviewed realtors on Zillow or Realtor.com should be ok. I'm sure someone will recommend a specific individual or firm.

This is valuable info! Thank you!!!

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Zillow doesn’t update for a few days. I used NJMLS.com to find my home. We saw the house and had our offer accepted before Zillow even had it on their site.

If you can't put down the full 20% you may qualify for an FHA loan. With an FHA loan you put down less than the 20% and the bank charges you mortgage insurance (PMI). With my FHA loan many years ago it worked out to about $150/month in mortgage insurance. Once you start making your mortgage payments and reach the 20% threshold the bank can remove the mortgage insurance. I recommend paying extra money towards your loan each month so the mortgage insurance will go away sooner. It will all depend on the specifics of your lender and your loan.

Nj will give you 15k forgivable is yr house hold income is less than 100k https://nj.gov/dca/hmfa/consumers/homebuyers/

Also banks offer mortgage discounts & closing cost programs for first time home buyers for example BOA https://www.bankofamerica.com/mortgage/affordable-housing-programs/

You can also pay mortgage insurance all at once, that’s what I did.

Ok here’s a (non exhaustive) list of national first time home buyer programs. A lot of them have income limits but some don’t https://homebuyer.com/learn/first-time-home-buyer-grants-programs if you search enough, you should find something from a bank that applies to you as well as state or fed govt programs that you qualify for.

Checkout Montgomery twp (https://www.montgomerynj.gov) has great schools, dedicated to preserve open space. Some town are literally next to Princeton.

10% down is good to start. You might need a PMI but you can remove it in as little as 5 years just by paying one extra payment a year.

Just as a heads up (I also have FHA loan), FHA loans have MIP not PMI. If your initial down payment is <10%, the MIP can not be removed unless refinanced to a non-FHA loan. If your initial down payment is >10%, MIP falls off after 11 years. There is no 20% rule on an FHA loan like there is on conventional. However, I still strongly recommend FHA because the MIP really isn't that high, just note it can't be removed unless you refinance.

am I reading this right and your salaries together are 400k a year? amd you "don't have much to put down only 65k"? lol