Buying your first home is as
exciting a process as it gets. But, it’s not just about finding the features or
the neighborhood that you want. For majority of the people, the price of a home
is a major deciding factor. Basically, there are two ways to determine whether
you can afford a particular home on your current salary or not.
1. The
monthly housing cost as a percentage of your gross income
The rule of
thumb says that your monthly housing costs must not exceed 28% of your total
gross income. For example, if your annual salary is $50,000, your monthly take
home income will be $4,167. If we follow the above mentioned rule, you can
afford to spend $1,167 per month on housing costs. The housing costs, here,
will include payment of mortgage installments (principal + interest), real
estate taxes and homeowners’ insurance.
This is the most
straightforward method of calculating your affordability. However, majority of
the times there are various other factors involved in addition to just housing
costs when you calculate your affordability. Such factors can be student debts, car
payments, credit card debts etc. This is where the next method of calculating
home affordability comes in.
2. Debt to income ratio
The debt to income
ratio method evaluates your home affordability by considering other debt
repayments in addition to the housing costs. The preferred ratio says that your
entire debt payments must not exceed 36% of your income.
This method
paints a more accurate picture of your home affordability. For example, On a
yearly salary of $50,000, or on a monthly salary of $4,167, you have the
following debt obligations:
·
Student Loan of $200
·
Car payment of $400
·
Credit card payments of $100
Now, if your
housing costs amount to an additional $1000, the total comes out to be $1,700
and ideally your entire debt can’t exceed $1,501. This means affording a home
that costs above $800 will be a problem for you.
Now that the basics are clear to you, you can
check out All Western Mortgage’s home affordability calculator to figure out how much home you can afford. You
can check out our mortgage amortization calculator here.