[sokoloff]

You're still competing against the other people who are in your similar economic circumstances. The reasons that you got outbid today aren't going to get dramatically better when you and millions of other people now have a 20% downpayment instead of a 16% downpayment.

(This is the general you, not the specific you, of course.)

[connicpu]

Higher interest rates will discourage the investor class from snatching up homes they don't intend to live in though. Not all of them of course, but the demand for living in homes is far less elastic than that of those using them to make money

[sokoloff]

Agreed; that's got about epsilon-squared to do with achieving the 20% down payment threshold, though.