You may be sitting on a good sized down payment for your new home and not even know it!

There are some other ways to be able to come up with a down payment these days that not everyone knows about.

The most common is to use your 401k. Most 401k programs will allow you to pull out money with no penalty in certain circumstances. Generally, one of them is to use as a down payment on a house purchase.

We've done this with several of our buyers and the process is pretty straight forward, quick and easy.

Here are the steps:

1. Contact your 401k provider and let them know that you would like to get money from your 401k to put down on a house purchase. They will give you instructions on what paperwork needs to be filled out and will tell you the maximum amount you are able to pull out.

2. Fill out the paperwork and get a purchase and sales agreement or lease/option agreement from the seller to show them.

3. Receive a check in the mail within a few weeks at most!

And here's something to think about. If you have enough of a down payment, you may more than likely be able to ask for Owner Financing right away. And if you haven't purchased a home in the past 3 years and have been renting, with the new laws that Obama passed, you would qualify for a $8,000 tax credit for purchasing a home in 2009.

And here's the kicker... the $8,000 comes to you regardless of the rest of your tax return numbers. In other words, it's really not a credit. The government will hand you $8,000 for free and you don't even have to pay it back as long as you live in your new home for a minimum of 3 years.

So let's say that you buy a home through owner financing this year and put $8,000 down as a down payment from your 401k (or any other source of money).

Then let's say that when you file next year's taxes, you don't qualify for a tax refund, or maybe you even owe some money. Regardless of that, the government will still send you $8,000.

If you have a tax refund on your taxes, you would get your refund plus the $8,000!

Now as a disclaimer, I am not giving legal and/or tax advice. Please check with your tax professional for further details.

But imagine this. You can put $8,000 down as a down payment and in a year, the government will return that $8,000 to you to put back into your pocket or back into your 401k!

And... did you know that JDK Real Estate Solutions will take items of value as a down payment? We'll get into that next with how our "Guaranteed Owner Financing" program works.