I remember when we first bought in the 1980s we were shocked at what the banks were willing to lend us….they’d lend us enough money to hang ourselves, even back then!
We’ve always worked into it the other way – we decide how big we want our house payment to be and then calculate how much $$ we can borrow to hit that number. We take that loan amount, tack on what we want to put down, and that’s the maximum we can spend!
It has worked well. We never come anywhere close to borrowing the max 28/36. We like to go out and have our fun on weekends, not sit with empty pockets watching reality TV at home.
Of course, when buying your first place, you might have to stretch a little more just to get in the game.
