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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I think you received a lot of good advice here (in addition to a lot of snark).  To repeat some of the points that seem insightful to me and relate some of my own experience:

1.  If your DH makes a million as an attorney, I would guess that he's fairly smart, and his claims that you cannot afford a 1.5+million house (it seems pretty clear that you can based on your HHI and savings) are pretext for his belief that your family can satisfy its needs and wants for much less.  Without knowing exactly what those are, I can't opine on whether that is, in fact, possible, though it seems to me from my own recent housing search that you can probably find something that meets your important criteria for 1.2-1.3 (See the recent thread on how much a 5 Br. dream house would cost.)  I would suggest that instead of framing the issue as how much can you afford that you frame it as much you need to spend to get what you need and want and, rather than a specific number, I'd try to find a range of 200 to 300k (because what you want/need may change as you look at more houses and you don't want to get locked into a particular price point too early.)  Also, since you're probably not going to buy a house DH is uncomfortable with, it may be better for you to try to get him to explain to you why you can get everything you want for less than a million, than for you to try to explain to him why you can't.  Until he sees how difficult it is to get a 5Br house in your sought neighborhoods for less than a million (unless you buy something on a busy street or real old, etc.), he probably won't change his mind on what he thinks you should spend.

2.  The best way to get an idea of how much you need to spend to get what you need and want from a house is to look at lots of houses on the market in your sought neighborhoods.  After a while, you'll both understand the differences between various price points and have a decent idea of which houses are actually worth more vs. unrealistic sellers (of which there are a lot).  It's probably good to loosely monitor the available listings now, but I suspect that you won't really get the best "sample" at this time because of the extreme lack of inventory.  There will likely be a lot more available in the spring.  (Fall/winter can be a great time to buy if you know what you want and find a motivated seller, but it probably isn't the best time to do your homework.)  We looked for almost a year (and over 50 houses) before placing an offer, and I know others that have taken longer.

3. Things that will significantly affect how much you need to spend are: proximity to a metro stop; if all the bedrooms are on the same level or not; if you need more than 3 or 3.5 bathrooms; if everything has to be recently renovated; and how many luxuries you want/imperfections you can deal with.  (For instance, we would have liked an eat-in kitchen, but bought a house without one, because it had almost everything else we wanted.)

4.  I'm always amazed at the many people that advocate putting more than 20% down on a house to lower the mortgage amount when someone has a lot of savings like you.  That only makes sense financially if you earn less on that money than the interest rate on your mortgage.  Given how low rates are now -- even for jumbo mortgages -- I'm not sure that strategy really would make sense for you, unless your husband felt psychologically better carrying less debt.  Remember that, because of inflation, the dollars you pay back tomorrow are not as valuable as the dollars you borrow today.

5.  I generally think it is better to think of a house as a place to live rather than as an investment, but putting your money into a house can be a strong part of a diversification strategy.  At your income level, I would consider talking to a financial planner about this (and 4).

6.  There's much more competition as price goes down, as many more people in this area can afford a 800k-950k house than a 1.1 house than a 1.4 house than a 1.7 house, etc. This is important because there have been a lot of bidding wars lately for houses less than 1.1m that are priced reasonably to begin with.  So, this may diminish the cost of going up a price point.

Good luck.  [/quote]

Wow!  You rock, thanks for the sound and well-articulated advice.  I will definitely take it to heart. [/quote]

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