How much house can I afford?

Question

I am a first time home buyer. I make about $3200.00 a month with o.k. credit. can you give me an idea on how much house I can afford? thanks.

This is after taxes are taken out

Answer 1

Hello, my name is Donetta Mortensen and im w/ GMAC park place Reality. i would love to help you in your situation. please give me a call [phone]

Answer 2

First of all make sure you work with net pay - do you bring home 3200.00 after taxes. Make sure you don't get too much debt. You need to consider other payments you have- car payments, credit cards, etc.

Answer 3

with average credit--and around 10% down---

When the housing market is hot they say you should go all the way to about 5 -6 times your yearly salary. However, that would be risky in todays market. I would say 4 times your salary so maybe 150-160k.

Dont let your monthly housing payments exceed 40% of your gross income. So your mortgage , plus tax, plus insurance should not be more then about 1280 a month.

Answer 4

A lot of it depends on where you live. Property taxes have to be figured in, whether or not you have to pay management fees to a condo association, etc. Your mortgage should not be more than 1/3 of your salary, by industry standards. So, you should not have a mortgage that is more than approximately $1000 a month. Also figured in are you other outstanding debts. But with no debts, $1000 a month equates to approximately a $175,000 loan with a decent interest rate.

Answer 5

Here is a great calculator on Yahoo that will give you the answer after plugging in a few numbers.

Answer 6

Around 914.00 dollars per month providing you are not already deep in debt.
Remember.....The monthly payment is NOT the total expense. There is much more to owning.

Answer 7

A realator already answered this question. She can help you better than I could