96-speed

iTrader: (19)

How much of your monthly income goes towards your mortgage/property tax? No need to give specific numbers. All I'm asking for is the rato, or % of your take home pay that goes to the mortgage. For example, if you take home 5,000 a month, and your mortgage is 1,000 bucks, your % would be 20%. So...

Two questions:

1. What % do you spend
2. Would you consider yourself living "comfortably" (very subjective, but I'm curious).

Getting --> <-- to home ownership, but just wanted to get some input from some current home owners .

TIA,
Ryan

Brains

iTrader: (7)

Mine is about 23% including escrow acct. (which covers taxes, homeowners ins, etc.)

chriswtx

iTrader: (5)

1.right at 18% here..

2.I live well..

BADZ

iTrader: (5)

25% of the salary, the other 75% goes the vehicles--

JMBLOWNWS6

iTrader: (17)

18% here.

aggiez28

iTrader: (19)

8%
I do ok

edit..... that % pretax not takehome sorry

1320FEVER

iTrader: (9)

About 19% of base salary, not including the bonuses

I think you can borrow up to 30%.

BizZzatch350

iTrader: (33)

0%, stay at home you guys have a pool

LS1x2

iTrader: (11)

Percentages don't matter so much IMO. How much luxury or whatever that affords you will depend on many factors. Figure out how much money you want to be able to invest and be able to blow on fun stuff like cars. Make a spreadsheet and calculate it all out. That's what I did. It works well. I've bought a house and 4 cars in the last 2 years (sold3 cars and own 3 currently).

I'll send you a copy of that spreadsheet with the numbers taken out if you want. Just PM me.

Splitz

iTrader: (1)

30% Here, I only make $15/hour but can afford a newly built $108k house.

We bought the house for living/investment building.

99FRC

iTrader: (5)

I'm a loan officer and we'll loan up to 50%, but only an idiot would take that much. It should really be between 10% and 20% to allow you enough to keep modding!

99 FRC

calongo_SS

iTrader: (7)

10%, I like the small payments, more free $$ for fun stuff

Posi12Bolt

iTrader: (13)

so I admit... I may be that idiot... but I really wanted the house...
I've only made 2 payments so far, I am selling my 2 rental houses to pull the $400k equity out and refi to get my percentage to 5-10%

right now its 60% of my GROSS, 110% or more of my NET

I need to hurry and refi after I sell my others

Posi12Bolt

iTrader: (13)

sorry, guys I didnt even realize this was in the Texas area

A-Dub

iTrader: (6)

When I bought my house, my mortgage was something like 35% (I am retarded), but I had 2 buddies renting rooms from me, so that helped out a lot. Through raises and getting married, the mortgage is now about 12%. When buying a house, I think its really important to work on savings. Broken stuff is now your responsibility, not someone elses. Its nice to have money for appliances or repairs and of course worst case you lose your job and needs funds to pay the bills for a month or so. I was saving a lot more slowly when the mortgage was 35% of my income.

Splitz

iTrader: (1)

I totally agree. The reason why said I've got mine at 30% is because I'm putting in an extra $200/month to pay down the principal. When my wife gets better employment (I hope VERY soon), then she's gonna put $800/month in just principal while I make the usual principal+interest+taxes on a monthly basis. We did the math, when we start doing that, the house will take 8 years to pay off! Woohoo!! (From a 30 year note to 9 year note).

But obviously there is a downside to doing that as well. The more principal you pay off, the less INTEREST is TAX deductible come the end of the year. So, that means we have to make LESS money to have the same standard of living. I hate Taxes!

Oh yea, we've got 4 months entire house bills in our savings account to account for me loosing employment.

Home ownership is the bomb!!!!!!!!!!!

chupr0kabra

iTrader: (10)

We're at around 15%, including escrow. We overpay by quite a bit on our escrow account, which we manage ourselves (with my parents' help). This way, every year or so, we can dip into the extra money to help fund some of the home improvement projects we've tackled.

It's a nice starter home in a quiet neighborhood, and since we moved in, we've:

• replaced the flooring in every room except the kitchen and both bathrooms - laminate in the living room and hallways, new carpet in the bedrooms
• replaced the countertops and backsplash in the kitchen. Removed the old veneer butcher block countertop/backsplash and replaced it with manufactured quartz (like Silestone, but it's one of the DuPont brands) and a tile backsplash. Also removed the wallpaper, floated, textured and painted the walls
• Removed wallpaper, floated, textured, and painted the walls in the guest bathroom. The old wallpaper was original to the house, which was built in '86. It was straight out of Miami Vice
• Replaced the entire air conditioning and heating system, ductwork and all
• Other miscellaneous little upgrade projects

It should be pretty easy to turn a nice profit when we move out. The neighbor across the street moved out about a year after we moved in (coincidence?) and he was asking $20K more than what we paid. I need to go to public records and see what the house actually sold for.


As for the comfort level, would I like more money? Sure. But we've set ourselves up to lead a lifestyle that is well below our means. My wife and I have planned it so that we can live (pay the bills and eat) indefinitely on just one of our salaries, but we wouldn't be making any money toward savings. Having that peace of mind in and of itself is a luxury, imo.



-Mike

96-speed

iTrader: (19)

Thanks for the info. To be honest, My plan is to ind a foreclosure somewhere, snag a cheap deal, then work on it for a few month until it is liveable. After a couple years, flip it and start over. Kind of looking for a side hobby that adds wealth, not sucks it dry .

Splitz: Sounds like you've got a good gameplan. Its pretty amazing when you look at the amortization schedule and realize how much faster you can pay off the house by adding a small % to the current mortgage payment .

Neilish: The people that have been around a backyard pool are the ones who know how big of a pain they are . We've looked at a few places, but when we find out they have a pool we turn around .

Ryan

LS69TA

iTrader: (30)

My house is about 33% of my monthly bring home. I'm gonna do a couple of things to it and sell it this year sometime. I hate being broke all the time.

Splitz

iTrader: (1)

Be REAL careful with the foreclosure market. Inspect the house THROUGHLY! You don't know how those people treated the house after they got the fore closure notices. Alot of people will trash the place since they know that they won't have to clean the **** up. Hire a 3rd party inspector (somebody NOT affiliated with the bank/lender), check every knook and cranny and foundation. Not saying that EVERYBODY does that to the houses but it's human nature to not take care of something if it's not yours anymore.

Good luck!