If you're looking at buying, make sure you're calculating the payment properly. Principal and interest, insurance, condo payment, taxes, etc. Also, the general rule to go by for estimating repairs is 1% of the home's value every year for each decade old. There are obvious limits to how far that will get you, but it's a good place to start in a budget.

As far as the no downpayment part, if you have assets that could be used to help bail you out in the event of an emergency, such as a 401k or other more liquid investments, it's not a terribly big deal. I've purchased 2 homes with next to nothing down. The first was in 2008 when the whole world was getting forclosed on. I got a 97% FHA loan. Yes, I paid mortgage insurance, but that was tax deductable then (and may be today, not sure on that) and I got the $8k from the government, so it worked out. I now rent that place out for $600 over my payment and expenses. We just bought a new place with 0 down. We did an 80-20, so no downpayment, no mortgage insurance. The first is at 3.125, the second is at 4.85 (HELOC).

I'm giving you the details above not to brag, but to show you that in some cases it can make sense and is possible to put very little down. Now, we have substantial reserves that the banks are likely counting on us dipping into should we need to, lowering the risk that we'll face foreclosure. We also have steady income, all 3 of both of our scores are above 800, and the properties were valued at least 10% higher than our purchase price at the time of the deal.

Things may be different for a condo though. Some of the cheaper ones may have super high condo association fees, or a history of having 'special fees', which is a nice way of saying surprise fees.