How much house *did* you buy?

[MonkeyMama]

In a recent post it was asked, "How much income do you need to buy a $250k house?"

I do admit that my issue with the question is the wide variety of variables. Which will be the same issue with this question.

But I am still curious...

First home:

1 - What was your income?
2 - What was the purchase price?
3 - How much did you borrow?
4 - Do you feel, with time, you stretched too much, were quite conservative, or it feels just right? Why?

Same question if you have moved up, or down, since.

Could be an interesting thread for people thinking about buying a home.

[project15]

1. Salary: $90k - both of us work, no kids
2. Price of home: $178k
3. Amount borrowed: $159k
4. No, we didn't stretch at all. We bought a fixer upper and also budgeted to have enough to fix it up. We've put $20k into it over the past 6 months. The townhouse is big enough to raise two kids, so we can stay in it as long as we want to. I feel very comfortable with our purchase. If one of us loses a job, we can still afford it on one salary (even though it would be very tight for our current standard of living).

[boosami]

First home:

1. Salary: $65k (single, no kids)
2. Price of Home: $149,900
3. Amount Borrowed: $119,000
4. It was a perfect little starter home in a great location, and is now one of my rental properties. I could easily afford it when I lived there, as I had no other debt and didn't stretch myself. These days I can still easily afford it, even if it is vacant. (Though currently I have tenants in the property.) The only downside is that its value is about the same as when I originally purchased it, due to the recession. I'd like to sell it in future, but now is definitely not the time.

[disneysteve]

First and only home:

1. Income $85,000
2. Purchase Price $142,000
3. Mortgage $113,600 (20% down)
4. We were comfortable with that amount. We were pre-approved for a fair amount more but I knew what they were saying we could afford and what we actually could do reasonably were two different numbers.

Great question, by the way.

[jIM_Ohio]

Originally Posted by MonkeyMama

First home:

1 - What was your income?
2 - What was the purchase price?
3 - How much did you borrow?
4 - Do you feel, with time, you stretched too much, were quite conservative, or it feels just right? Why?

Same question if you have moved up, or down, since.

First home was a condo

1) Made about 50k
2) purchase price was 152k
3) 145k
4) my wife was my fiance at the time, but was not on the mortgage even though she paid bills (her credit score was not helping qualifying- around 600). Was tight for about a year then wife got a really good job (she had only worked for 2 years at the time we closed, and those were temp jobs).

Second was a single family home 7 years later.

1) made about 100k
2) purchase price was 352k bought at the peak of the bubble (IMO) in Dec 2005.
3) 330k
4) again tight first year (that was advice I was being given) and 20k of raises later we are doing well.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

First Home Condo 1 bedroom

1. $42k combined gross
2. $165k
3. $132k 1st, 16.k 2nd mortgage
4. Bought with my DH who was my Boyfriend at the time. I thought it extremely tight, but we were only paying $700 mortgage + $200 2nd mortgage+ $150 HOA + $150 property taxes + $20 insurance = $1200 which is what we were renting for.

With the tax deduction we were actually better off and building equity. It was REALLY tight though. We were on graduate student stipends and unfortunately the area was just ridiculously expensive. It was not a good situation. But if we couldn't pay our mortgage, we had been locked into renting at that price as well. So we were used to it.

2nd home townhouse
1. $175k that year, ~$130k since
2. purchase price $575k, with $25k back from the developer
3. $460k mortgage
4. Again tight and tighter still after my DH went back to get an MBA. It's not great still but better. We're managing. The interest rate we got really helped.

We weren't that stressed actually. It was basically all my DH's salary and very little mine so we were buying on one income.

I am hoping we can score a SFH on our next home.

[GREENBACK]

1. 55k
2. 75k(an absolute steal)
3. 60k
4. I think this was quite conservative. It was very nice at the time to not be attached at the hip to a big mortgage. It gives you so much more breathing room in the rest of your financial life.

[m3racer]

Originally Posted by LivingAlmostLarge

.
2nd home townhouse
1. $175k that year, ~$130k since
2. purchase price $575k, with $25k back from the developer
3. $460k mortgage
4. Again tight and tighter still after my DH went back to get an MBA. It's not great still but better. We're managing. The interest rate we got really helped.

That must be a VERY nice townhouse for $575k.

[jIM_Ohio]

Originally Posted by m3racer

That must be a VERY nice townhouse for $575k.

or LAL lives in DC area, NYC, CA or some other expensive area. I remember seeing townhouses in DC suburbs going for 500k+ in 1996.

[zetta]

1st home townhouse (1170 sq ft, 2 bdr)
1. income -- around $56k
2. price -- $189k
3. loan -- $140k (25% down, with $20k gift from my parents)
4. I feel I was fairly conservative. I paid 1.5 points to bring the monthly payment down to a comfortable level. My mortgage was actually $200 less than what a roommate and I had been paying for a 2 br apt.

It was the best investment I ever made, as I bought at the very beginning of the bubble, and sold it for $369k during the middle of the bubble (2002).

[myrdale]

Income = $55k
Price = $108k
Loan = $100k
Overall = I was approved for $180k, I knew that was far outside of my budget. $110k was my ceiling. Homes are not what I would consider cheap around here, but that was the best deal I could find.

I think I did excellent. Ofcourse I wish I could have found something in the $80-90k range, but I love what I got!

[tripods68]

2003
1. Income - $91K
2. Home Price - $283K (1740 sq ft, 3 bdr NorCAL)
3. Mortgage Balance - $265K (7% down FHA) - My parents help put down $21K which we paid off last year.

We have much higher income now but our home its worth according to zillow $225K But we are very happy in the community we are living even in the midsts of sub prime mess.

[Phatphoeater]

Income: 180k combined
Closing price: 570k
Loan value: 512k
Our current housing costs to net income ratio is about 35%, but living in the San Francisco area is costly. We rented prior to buying at about 1/3 the monthly cost. It isn't tight as we are both minimal spenders. I just hope the big earthquake doesn't come along in our lifetime because our poor 90 year old house will surely crumble.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Extremely HCOLA. Most 1 bd were $300k. $575k didn't buy that much to be honest, more the location. Very close to city, inner suburb.

Our friends bought in the city $525 2bd/1ba! Soooo...you see it's ridiculously expensive.

By the way we sold our 1st place for almost $300 and scored our downpayment in 3 years. It doubled in 3 years.

[SavingCash]

1. $32,000 (student loans) as a medical student.
2. $61,900 for a brand new 2 BR 2 BA 1100 square foot townhome. What a deal!
3. $55,900 borrowed.
4. My payment including taxes and insurance was $530 per month, which was easily doable on my student loans. The housing market at the time was booming, so it really felt right. In the end, I ended up making $25,000 on the sale of the house when I started residency. Right place at the right time...

[MonkeyMama]

Wow - what a response.

First home:

1 - What was your income? $60k? (2 incomes)
2 - What was the purchase price? $260k condo
3 - How much did you borrow? $210k
4 - Do you feel, with time, you stretched too much, were quite conservative, or it feels just right? Why? You know, it felt just right. We lived in an extremely pricey area. This was the most we could afford with old fashioned lending standards (it was the 90s/we put 20% down). The interest rate was kind of high. We refied to a 15-year loan shortly after that and was fine for 2 years. That being said, our income went up to almost $100k in the course of 2 years. But even so, we knew housing would be a chunk of our income, and all things considered, the home was cheaper than anything we could have rented (including a studio apartment on the wrong side of the tracks. I Don't understand the whole renting is cheaper thing. If that was the case where we live, we'd be HAPPY to rent.). We also had no other debts. Though looking back, I see we took on a lot. But our thinking at the time was honestly something we could afford on one income. We were used to most of our income going to rent, etc. (& yeah - the tax breaks really helped with the cost back then).

[MonkeyMama]

Second home:

1 - What was your income? $100k (2 incomes)
2 - What was the purchase price? $300k (dream home)
3 - How much did you borrow? $230k
4 - Do you feel, with time, you stretched too much, were quite conservative, or it feels just right? Why? We moved to a lower cost area to buy more house. The house feels "dirt cheap" to me. That is certainly relative! But our perspective is very skewed. Though our income, combined, was officially $100k when we bought the house, most of the years we have lived here, our income has been $50k-$70k. Even so, the house payment is only 15% of my income with falling interest rates, income tax breaks, etc. We'll pay off the house in our 40s or early 50s. Most of our friends rent apartments for far more. So I feel this was a very conservative purchase considering the region. (Interestingly, since we moved somewhere cheaper, all our costs are about the same - insurance, property taxes, maintenance, utilities and everything - even though the house is twice as big as our first condo). On the flip side, we expected a much lower income the last 8 years we have lived here. I got more pay than I expected moving here, and more raises than I expected, since dh quit working. We felt we could afford this home quite easily on one low income.

We actually originally intended to only borrow about $150k (expected more equity from condo). But stuff happened, and we still felt this was a good move in the end, even borrowing $100k more than planned. Our alternative was to stay put and pay $500k+ for a starter HOUSE. 8 years later, happy to say we still feel it was a good move.

[supercheap]

Today if you don't already own a house you are lucky. You would have to be nuts to buy one now. Housing will keep going down in price at least for the next 12 months more likely more than that. Rents will keep falling along with prices. Then when we do bottom out don't worry about missing it. When prices hit the bottom they will stay there for a long long time.

[simpleyme]

1. 20K
2.25K single family dwelling Victorian fixer upper on 3 city lots with nice detached garage(we do not live in it any more but still own it tax statement declares it work 200K)
3.borrowed 22,500 land sale contract no fees of any kind except tittle insurance
4. It was a stretch at first but our house payment was the same as our rent had been, the places we rented were old and landlords did no repairs so it was great to move into a fixer that we could repair things on that was ours
there were lots of houses available at the time that cost 150K and that's what most of our friends bought so we were not "lucky" we bought a house that we could afford the payment on even if DH lost his job and could only get a job in fast food
we were dirt ass poor when we bought and very young pretty uneducated but we manged to make these decisions and that is I have very little empathy for highly paid educated professionals who are managing to lose there house,they always put "my kind "down, yet cannot do the most basic thing as spend less than the earn

[thekid]

Purchased first house with fiance a year ago.

1. 150-160K$ (combined);
2. 352K$;
3. 95K$
4. It's pretty easy. Financed over 20 years, so 640$ monthly motgage payments. Making substantial prepayments, so should be done in 5-7 years.

To be fair though, my fiance had a bit of money and paid her half cash. I'm the one paying the mortgage. So, for my half the numbers are:

1. about 100K$;
2. 176K$;
3. 95K$;
4. Same as above. We could have bought more house fairly easily, but there was no point. We really love our house and plan on having a family here and staying long term.