Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, look at your financial situation, your consumption habits, and future income vs expenses. People on this forum are nuts. I think most just have bad spending habits....excessive alochol, travel, recreation drug use, etc. You don't need a $500k to purchase a $1.6m home, at least when you are not white (cacausian). We built a $2m custom for a income same as yours and not stretched by any means. Both kids in private college and retirement fully funded and we travel and shop at whole foods,mets. We are in our late 40s. Bunch of bull here on this form....!

PPP may be on to something here. I have seen many immigrant (the professional kind) with good, but not super high incomes purchasing high end (>$1.5m) homes throughout the finer suburban Montgomery and Fairfax county sub divisions. I own a small hme improvement business and find myself installing decks, patios, hardscaping, etc at numerous newly built homes owned by immigrants. Must be a cultural and/or lifestyle thing I guess.

The immigrant families are able to do this because single adult children often live with their parents and their income contribute to the household expenses.

Asian-American here. Many Asians also have family wealth. My parents came to America with family money even though they never had a high income. DH and I live in an expensive home but we have a seven figure income.

If you see an average Chinese guy buying an expensive home that is not well supported by his income, it's most likely the older parents in China funding their lifestyle. I wouldn't go so far as to call this family wealth because the older parents are not really wealthy, they just passed on their life savings to their kids while they are still alive. This is quite common in modern Chinese culture where the male side of the family is expected to put up the housing for the young couple. This is in contrast to rich families from HK, Taiwan, or even the newly rich from mainland China, who are truly wealthy, and these people tend to buy much much larger homes - $3M and above typically.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, look at your financial situation, your consumption habits, and future income vs expenses. People on this forum are nuts. I think most just have bad spending habits....excessive alochol, travel, recreation drug use, etc. You don't need a $500k to purchase a $1.6m home, at least when you are not white (cacausian). We built a $2m custom for a income same as yours and not stretched by any means. Both kids in private college and retirement fully funded and we travel and shop at whole foods,mets. We are in our late 40s. Bunch of bull here on this form....!

PPP may be on to something here. I have seen many immigrant (the professional kind) with good, but not super high incomes purchasing high end (>$1.5m) homes throughout the finer suburban Montgomery and Fairfax county sub divisions. I own a small hme improvement business and find myself installing decks, patios, hardscaping, etc at numerous newly built homes owned by immigrants. Must be a cultural and/or lifestyle thing I guess.

The immigrant families are able to do this because single adult children often live with their parents and their income contribute to the household expenses.

It can be all over the map with immigrant families. Sure some have the set up you're describing -- where grown adult children live at home until marriage so there are multiple incomes paying off the mortgage. There are other scenarios where immigrants come here with family money and/or their family back home funds a lot of a house purchase. But there are also scenarios where they come here with a few suitcases and no family help and buy a $2 million home when their kids are 8 and 10 and obviously not contributing to the mortgage -- never under estimate immigrant scrimping and saving and sacrificing to get what they want; I have seen it time and time again.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, look at your financial situation, your consumption habits, and future income vs expenses. People on this forum are nuts. I think most just have bad spending habits....excessive alochol, travel, recreation drug use, etc. You don't need a $500k to purchase a $1.6m home, at least when you are not white (cacausian). We built a $2m custom for a income same as yours and not stretched by any means. Both kids in private college and retirement fully funded and we travel and shop at whole foods,mets. We are in our late 40s. Bunch of bull here on this form....!

PPP may be on to something here. I have seen many immigrant (the professional kind) with good, but not super high incomes purchasing high end (>$1.5m) homes throughout the finer suburban Montgomery and Fairfax county sub divisions. I own a small hme improvement business and find myself installing decks, patios, hardscaping, etc at numerous newly built homes owned by immigrants. Must be a cultural and/or lifestyle thing I guess.

The immigrant families are able to do this because single adult children often live with their parents and their income contribute to the household expenses.

Asian-American here. Many Asians also have family wealth. My parents came to America with family money even though they never had a high income. DH and I live in an expensive home but we have a seven figure income.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, look at your financial situation, your consumption habits, and future income vs expenses. People on this forum are nuts. I think most just have bad spending habits....excessive alochol, travel, recreation drug use, etc. You don't need a $500k to purchase a $1.6m home, at least when you are not white (cacausian). We built a $2m custom for a income same as yours and not stretched by any means. Both kids in private college and retirement fully funded and we travel and shop at whole foods,mets. We are in our late 40s. Bunch of bull here on this form....!

PPP may be on to something here. I have seen many immigrant (the professional kind) with good, but not super high incomes purchasing high end (>$1.5m) homes throughout the finer suburban Montgomery and Fairfax county sub divisions. I own a small hme improvement business and find myself installing decks, patios, hardscaping, etc at numerous newly built homes owned by immigrants. Must be a cultural and/or lifestyle thing I guess.

The immigrant families are able to do this because single adult children often live with their parents and their income contribute to the household expenses.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, look at your financial situation, your consumption habits, and future income vs expenses. People on this forum are nuts. I think most just have bad spending habits....excessive alochol, travel, recreation drug use, etc. You don't need a $500k to purchase a $1.6m home, at least when you are not white (cacausian). We built a $2m custom for a income same as yours and not stretched by any means. Both kids in private college and retirement fully funded and we travel and shop at whole foods,mets. We are in our late 40s. Bunch of bull here on this form....!

PPP may be on to something here. I have seen many immigrant (the professional kind) with good, but not super high incomes purchasing high end (>$1.5m) homes throughout the finer suburban Montgomery and Fairfax county sub divisions. I own a small hme improvement business and find myself installing decks, patios, hardscaping, etc at numerous newly built homes owned by immigrants. Must be a cultural and/or lifestyle thing I guess.

The immigrant families are able to do this because single adult children often live with their parents and their income contribute to the household expenses.

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious to see opinions on how much you think your HHI should be if you were to purchase a 1.6MM home, 20-25% down (i.e., around $7000-7500 monthly mortgage).

Assume no student debt, no car loans, and no child care costs.

I'm thinking about doing this sometime next year, but in seeing the housing vs. HHI numbers of people here on various threads, I think I'd be on the 'very risky' side. HHI is around 310K (wife is SAHM for now), 2 'jobs' so side job is bringing in good income + has lots of income upside potential, and if I put down 20% down I'd still have over 125K liquid cash in the bank.

In addition, my retirement savings are below average I'd say (75K 401K/IRA, 1 rental property with 140K equity).

Interested to hear your thoughts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op, look at your financial situation, your consumption habits, and future income vs expenses. People on this forum are nuts. I think most just have bad spending habits....excessive alochol, travel, recreation drug use, etc. You don't need a $500k to purchase a $1.6m home, at least when you are not white (cacausian). We built a $2m custom for a income same as yours and not stretched by any means. Both kids in private college and retirement fully funded and we travel and shop at whole foods,mets. We are in our late 40s. Bunch of bull here on this form....!

PPP may be on to something here. I have seen many immigrant (the professional kind) with good, but not super high incomes purchasing high end (>$1.5m) homes throughout the finer suburban Montgomery and Fairfax county sub divisions. I own a small hme improvement business and find myself installing decks, patios, hardscaping, etc at numerous newly built homes owned by immigrants. Must be a cultural and/or lifestyle thing I guess.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The assumption is that you're paid once every 2 weeks. Hence 26 payments per year, not 24.

When our mortgage is due, we don't get to count on that partial payment of the 2 extra pay cycles. We count on the 2 paychecks we know will hit our account.

Good for you. But i don't think that most people earning 300k are living paycheck to paycheck...

Actually OP sounds like they will be living paycheck to paycheck. One paycheck won't even cover the mortgage. He will need part of the second paycheck to cover the mortgage alone.

Anonymous wrote:No. Exercise some patience and self control.

Take that $7000/month and save it for 2 years. If you successfully save another $170K in the next 2 years (and your income rises as you think it will), then buy.

At this point, you will have very little cushion for true financial emergencies.
What if we hit another recession and you get laid off?
What if you, wife of kids have a medical problem?
What if you have to help out your aging parents?

I'm in Finance and make $350 (and rising) and we bought a $800K house with $400k downpayment and $400k mortgage. I believe houses over $1M should have a 50% downpayment, or you really can't afford it.

Before you buy a $1.6M house, you should save more for retirement, get your wife an IRA, fully fund your kids 529 plans and open a brokerage account where you save more.
Even saving the 401k max every year is not alone going to provide for enough income in retirement for someone used to living on $100,000+ /year. You better have a better plan.

I have 2 friends who recently had to sell their "dream" homes because they couldn't afford them after a minor financial setback

Anonymous wrote:No. Exercise some patience and self control.

Take that $7000/month and save it for 2 years. If you successfully save another $170K in the next 2 years (and your income rises as you think it will), then buy.

At this point, you will have very little cushion for true financial emergencies.
What if we hit another recession and you get laid off?
What if you, wife of kids have a medical problem?
What if you have to help out your aging parents?

I'm in Finance and make $350 (and rising) and we bought a $800K house with $400k downpayment and $400k mortgage. I believe houses over $1M should have a 50% downpayment, or you really can't afford it.

Before you buy a $1.6M house, you should save more for retirement, get your wife an IRA, fully fund your kids 529 plans and open a brokerage account where you save more.
Even saving the 401k max every year is not alone going to provide for enough income in retirement for someone used to living on $100,000+ /year. You better have a better plan.

I have 2 friends who recently had to sell their "dream" homes because they couldn't afford them after a minor financial setback

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The houses around here under 1.5M are terrible

We bought our 1.2M eight years ago. Crazy how expensive homes have become in this area.