I'm not sure what the recommended guidelines are right now. For some reason I was thinking 3x your total household income. For example, if your household income was $100,000 a year and your mortgage was around $300,000 that would be about right. What range is your mortgage in?

Another example: Your household income is $60,000. Your mortgage is $200,000. So, to figure your percentage you'd divide 200/60= 3.33

Our mortgage is about 2 times our monthly income. We were approved to spend 80,000 more when we were shopping for a house, but chose something much cheaper to avoid our mortgage eating up our entire income. We are pretty darn happy with the decision, because even now it seems like a lot sometimes.

Isn't that funny how the mortgage company will aprove you for soo much more than you should realisticly (sp) buy?!

Crown Ministries recommends that the you don't exceed 40% of your net income, that should include your utilities, insurance, etc. That may be the same percentage, I haven't figured for total price. We are at about 40% of our net income on our house. However, we would like to downsize so we can save some money. Angela

Well under 2x (1.02) for us. We bought at the right time, underbought for what we could afford, and dh got a big promotion last year. We are blessed!

Ours is 1.12 percent of our income

1.46 of our income

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Crystal
Mom to Paige & Faith

Mine is abut 2.43% right now. It was lower but I refinanced to a higher mortgage this past year to get some cash out for some projects. I think that a better indicator might be how much of a percentage your mortgage is of your monthly income. My mortgage payment is less than 25% of my net income so I'm comfortable with that. I would have never purchased a house this expensive on my own. If you used our joint income from when I was married and purchased the house - our % drops to around 1.5%.

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Better to give your kids the values you have
than the valuables you can't afford.

Wow! I'm impressed with the thriftiness of those who have responded. Maybe it's just where I live, but I see people overextending themselves with their mortgage payment all the time.

Our income is about $50K, and the balance on our mortgage is around $100K so NOT too bad. WE bought at $115 and we were making about $40K 5 years ago. WE were approved for $150 but we KNEW that we would never be able to keep up those payments so we opted for the cheaper 'fixer upper". Its still waiting to be 'fixed up". LOL

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~Missy~Mommy
Meghan8.Samantha7,Cameron4