You didn't ask, "If you bought an 850K home...."

I think dcum is full of older non first time buyers who have equity and bought before their first home before the bubble.

A lot of these HHI to housing costs seem unreal to me. Who is buying all of the $800k and up houses that seem to be the norm around this area?

Either DCUM posters are on the incredibly financially conservative end or people make these numbers up so Susie Orman won't yell at them.

$225K income with a $530K house. Looked at homes up to $750K, as we have no other debt, but glad we kept the price tag much lower.

We bought a $750k home with a 400k mortgage. This was a downsizing so we had enough equity from the last home to keep our mortgage small this time around. HHI = 150k. It is fine, even with a kid in college.

I would pay more attention to your debt to income ratios. I think if you want to be conservative, it would be no more than 28% of gross toward mortgage/no more than 33% including all debt; a little more aggressive (and probably more realistic in this area) is 33%/38%.

we are at 230k (after years of 150-180k) and looking at a 500-550k mortgage (for a 700-800k house). We are looking to be in a top school district, for the long haul. Its much more than I want to spend, however. I would prefer to keep our mortgage at 400k (what it is now) but I have found very little in the 550-650k range of houses.

600k, 10% down (but we pay extra principle every month so we're building equity fast), HHI is 320k.

To answer 9:57, we can afford more house than this but we don't need more house than this. We'd rather have cash to invest in other things. Real estate is only part of our portfolio.

Our HHI is ~ $165k and we're currently looking at homes $500k and under, with plans to put 20% down. We don't have any other debt, but we'll need a new car at some point, and also anticipate childcare costs in the next few years to the tune of $1500+ a month, so we're trying to keep our PITI housing costs around $2k/mo but no higher than $2.5k/mo.

Anonymous wrote:600k, 25% down HHI is 360k

With this HHI, why not buy a more expensive home? Seems like $600k isn't going to get you much, at least not in DC. Our HHI is less than half this, and we're looking in the 600k range. We're putting down 50% from equity in previous house, though, so our mortgage will be about $300k.

It's all about the mortgage. We bought $900k home and mortgaged $350k on $230k HHI.

Looking around 500k with a HHI of 140k-160k (fluctuates with bonuses, etc.)

Putting 100k down. Have about 500/month of student loan debt -- no other major expenses.

HHI is around $150k and we are looking in the $600k price range. We have some student loan debt, no car payment, no other debt. Putting 20 percent down. Major expense is daycare (about 2000 a month) which we'll have for another 2 years or so. It's going to be tight until then (ie no cable TV, cutting back on food expenses) but we're concerned interest rates will go up quite a bit if we wait 2 more years.

600k, 25% down HHI is 360k

We bought last summer for $549k. HHI was $165K. Daycare was our only real expense (~$2300/mo). We put down 25% so only borrowed $411k. Monthly payment is $2415.

I agree with the other poster it is not about the sale price, but about the mortgage payment and how it fits in with your other expenses.