Post by jennistarr1 on Oct 10, 2013 19:27:53 GMT -5
I was going to say 400...play with the numbers, how much do you pay now in rent/mortgage and how comfortable is that for you...We payed 900 in rent and saved 400 a month for a house, so we figured about 1300 for a mortgage and escrow so we bought at 204,900 with minimum FHA amount down...our mortgage is now up to about 1400 and we're doing fine. Salary is about half of you
I voted 100-200k. We make almost $200k and our $190k house is a bit more than I want to be paying.
You think more than ~1,200 would be too much? What else do you spend your money on?
Yes, I want to be able to put 15% into retirement, a big chunk to savings, day care, saving for cars, not having to worry about what we spend on groceries, utilities, travel to visit family and eating out.
I don't know. I said in the other thread that we make about that, and would probably look up to about $350k, but I'm honestly not sure. I apparently need to get my spending under control, lol. My PITI right now is $1350, which is for a $250k house with a 20% DP. This is obviously very manageable, but I don't feel like I am rolling in extra money every month either. To go up to a $350k house, with the additional taxes factored in, I think my PITI would increase by around $1k per month. That seems like it would be tight on my budget right now. No kids, $200/month in SLs, no other debt.
That's about what we make and bought $460, we're looking up to 500. 20% down. We also had 3 kids in daycare/ catholic school and knew we wanted a 4th at the time
Post by imojoebunny on Oct 10, 2013 19:49:54 GMT -5
Some of this is dependent to me on the age and potential maintence on the house. Also the taxes. The same house in one place might pay $2k in taxes, and another $8k. I also think there is a significant difference between putting 10 and 20% down, given PMI.
Post by rosiedozie on Oct 10, 2013 19:50:37 GMT -5
I think it depends on other expenses. For reference, we make a combined $130k and bought a house at $203k. Right now it's 21% of our take home which is low but we (hopefully) anticipate daycare bills double our mortgage one day and wanted to be in a good place for that.
Post by nextbigthing on Oct 10, 2013 19:51:45 GMT -5
We make about that and bought a house for $293k and put $100k down on a 20 yr. I was always scared of being house poor and I work on commission for a good chunk of my income. If we were both straight salary I may have looked up to $350ish
Is this a shame on you post? lol. I get it now, I get it. Uncle!
Actually, this was all very helpful. That 300-400K range sounds very comfortable.
Shame on you? No, more like people are nuts thinking 150K/yr = only 200K house.
It depends where you live. We make $150k and it would be very tight for us to afford a $400k house here. Taxes alone would be about $1k per month. We also pay a high rate of state income tax, and have very few deductions, so our take home pay is definitely not in line with what some people at this income level bring home.
Well we bought a $235K house on $65K income, so not very MM. Now we're in the same house at $150K income. In MCOL, I'd probably spend up to $400K at our income level. That would be a stretch, though. $300-350K would be comfortable.
ETA: I based this off the assumption that you live in a state w/ no income tax; otherwise I'd bump down a bit to accommodate for less actual take-home pay. I assumed this was for you, kooshball!
Come now. We all know that kooshball's HHI is far more than $150K!
Post by librarymom on Oct 10, 2013 20:02:53 GMT -5
We make a little more and our house is a 340K house that we owe 210K on. We have high daycare costs and we still could afford a much higher mortgage and are thinking about it (low taxes). Right now, we like it but I think we could afford a 400-500K house and will consider moving in the future.
We make about that and have a $330k mortgage ($420k house), and pay more than our mortgage in child care costs, contribute 12% to retirement, and don't really live with a tight budget. A 200k house on a $190k salary is asinine.
If I had no debt, no kids, and no plans to have kids, I would shoot for mid $300s but be fine with $400s.
We bought a $350k house with 10% down when our HHI was $160k and we had no debt and no kids, and we were pretty comfortable. We still saved quite a bit, traveled, went out a lot, and paid DH's b-school tuition out of pocket. We could have handled a $400k house at that point.
Conversely, we now make substantially more, but the mortgage on the house we just bought is $300k--less than on our first house. There is no way I would be comfortable with a bigger mortgage at this point because our other expenses are so high (mainly childcare and private school for three kids).
I'm not sure why a $220K house on a $150K salary is nuts? We have 2600 sq ft finished in a VLCOL area, and it was a move in ready forever home. As I said in the other post, I am very, very glad that we were so conservative since we never in a millions years expected DH to lose his job. So, I'm kind of put off by the word "nuts." Maybe I'm just having an oversensitive evening...
It was clearly a good choice for your family, but if someone were to say "no one should spend more than $220K on a house when they make $250K," that's kind of off-putting.
Post by LoveTrains on Oct 10, 2013 20:21:35 GMT -5
I think part of it depends on your taxes. We pay over $500/month in property taxes so we tried to keep our home purchase to no more than $300K with a $150Kish income.
We make about that and bought a $265K house last year.
We also have another $150K house that is a rental property, though, and we wanted to be able to afford both in the event we ever had to sustain a long period without renters in the $150K property.
Other info: DH is a SAHD so we are somewhat conservative because I am the only earner right now. We also have 2 car payments (gasp! but one is just a few months from being paid off). Obv no daycare costs. Some CC debt that's lingering out there too, which we should just wipe out with my next bonus.
I'm not sure why a $220K house on a $150K salary is nuts? We have 2600 sq ft finished in a VLCOL area, and it was a move in ready forever home. As I said in the other post, I am very, very glad that we were so conservative since we never in a millions years expected DH to lose his job. So, I'm kind of put off by the word "nuts." Maybe I'm just having an oversensitive evening...
It was clearly a good choice for your family, but if someone were to say "no one should spend more than $220K on a house when they make $250K," that's kind of off-putting.
But no one is saying that. I think I put out the lowest number, and that's what ***I*** feel comfortable with.
Our take home is about that. We bought for 225k with 40k down and pay about 700 a month in property taxes. We're browsing homes now in the 300k range. We're more than comfortable with what we pay monthly and can sustain our monthly payments on one income if need be which was a huge factor for me.
Some of this is dependent to me on the age and potential maintence on the house. Also the taxes. The same house in one place might pay $2k in taxes, and another $8k. I also think there is a significant difference between putting 10 and 20% down, given PMI.
I totally agree with this. Putting 20% down on a $600k house with $4,000 taxes and putting 10% down on a $600k house with $15,000 taxes are like 2 different animals. The difference in the payment would be more than $1000 different. Adding in differences for PMI vs. no PMI, differences in the cost of homeowner's insurance, HOA fees, and maintenance for older homes, and you can easily have another several hundred dollar a month differences on similar houses. Another factor would be interest rates. Our money went so much further when buying our 2nd house because interest rates had fallen by 3%. It made a huge difference in what price range we were looking.
I make slightly less than 150k, my house was in the above range, and if I weren't carrying another mortgage on my condo I'd more comfortable. As it is, it requires a watchful eye, but it's still possible to save.
*Obviously H contributes to the household, but I'm the only one on the mortgages, so I always do calculations based solely on my income.
Post by wanderlustmom on Oct 10, 2013 21:25:53 GMT -5
When we bought this house, it was 280K and we put 40K down on a 85K income, I SAH. Now I am back to work PT and DH got a raise so our income is 150K and we have no plans to upgrade our house. We instead take the kids on an international vacation every year and put money into remodels. I know a lot of friends that have higher mortgages with our same income, I get that too, we just aren't huge house people.
I always forget about how low our effective tax rate is here in WA. We mortgaged $285k on an $85k HHI a little over two years ago, but property taxes are only ~$3k/year and we have no state income tax. It was totally comfortable then with no kids, and we still put 15% to retirement. Now our income's >30% higher, but we have a kid... It's still comfortable.
Our house was in the $400-500K range when we bought, with income at about $150K and one child, no debt. It was a reasonable expenditure, as we purchased for about $50K less than we were approved. I voted, however, for the $300-400K range because I prefer the comfort level for other, higher savings and bucket-list items.