can I afford this house?

Sweetie2004 Posted: Jun 11, 2004 06:37 PM

can I afford this house?

I found a house online (we are just starting to look) and I'm wondering if it is something we could afford. I tried one of those calculators, and it scared me! It says I can only afford a house that is 300,000!

This house is listed as 479,000. Do you have any guess as to what the monthly payment would be if we put down 10% or a little more?

Is there some kind of formula we can use?

this is sooo frustrating!

Kelly9904 Posted: Jun 11, 2004 10:22 PM

Re: can I afford this house?

First I dont believe those calculators that say you can only afford X amount! I know a few of us on here who got a really low # back from those!

Only you know what you can afford. If you type in 'mortgage calculator' into yahoo there are a lot of sites to help you...
heres one that I like because it shows you how much you will pay over the life of the loan!Calculator

nov04LIbride Posted: Jun 11, 2004 11:31 PM

Re: can I afford this house?

Well, your monthly mortgage rate would be around $2667.77 putting down 10%. Figure out if you need to absorb your closing costs (figure 10,000 or so) into the mortgage, and add that on if you have to. Also figure on home insurance, taxes, utilities, etc. No one can say whether you can afford it without knowing what your combined income is, but I would say figure $4060 a month or so with the mortgage, taxes, and utilities (that is figuring taxes of about 12,000 a year). If your take home pay for you both combined is over $6000 I would say you could probably do that comfortably, assuming you have no car payments or previous debt or other payments.

soon2bMrs Posted: Jun 12, 2004 11:23 AM

Re: can I afford this house?

I find the mortgage calculators to be pretty accurate. In order to determine if you could afford a certain house, plug in the numbers determine the mortgage, add taxes, homeowners insurance, pmi (since your deposit is less than 20%) and a reasonable figure for utilities. I would say ~500/month for utilities, including heat, water electric etc. When you get an estimate of your living costs, you wouldn't want that number to be more than 50% of your combined take home pay. The expert say your living expenses you shouldn't be more than 30% of your take home pay but that is nearly impossible on LI.