Rent/PITI
Way too many folks in the PNW are "house poor".
Lemme guess: you're not really just curious are you? No, what's happening is that your friends and coworkers are buying 2M+ homes and bragging about it over lunch or on social media, even though for most of them, they overcommitted on the mortgage and are now house poor (but they won't tell you that of course). Your wife is browsing Redfin and Zillow on the daily, dragging you to open houses she favorited during the weekend. She finally finds her dream home, but alas the mortgage payments would consume more than 30% of your monthly income, so now you turn to Blind to see if others were stupid enough to put so much of their money into a mortgage...but deep down you know you can't really afford it, and yet you can't say no to your wife...
Truth
Way to make it about my wife because gender roles or whatever. Didn’t realize this was 1952. We’re also searching within our means and yes I was genuinely curious what people are spending from their net pay. The well known rule of thumb is 28% of gross monthly income but that seems rather conservative to me and our location/bubble are rather unique.
I wonder if buying a house is even a good idea in Bay Area. I know rents are pretty steep, but OMFG the hassle of a home mortgage and the associated downpayment!
I just saw your post asking for first time home buyers tips, if you are not sure don’t pull the trigger
Thanks! Yes, I am very weirded out but the sad (and expensive) options. Either the commute is too long or it’s a freaking matchbox of a house. So, yes, certainly not sure as yet.
0%
3/8 so that's 37.5%
Small town house, spending way below my means. $1900 mortgage. Bought it when my TC was 140k. I think one approach is to not think about how much house you can afford, but think how small of a house do you need. Buying relative to income leads to excess and results in people becoming House poor. I am very comfortable and also have enough space and am invested in the Bay Area market. Good balance
TC 400 YOE 8