How much would you pay for it?

How much do YOU pay for your mortgage? How much were you preapproved for?

• I know this is a personal question, but it seems like something that could be helpful. I hear a lot of "how much can I get with such and such conditions", and generally people will get pointed off to some mortgage calculator. They are helpful, but putting in the same stats I have gotten some seriously different advice on what I might be able to afford on different calculators. I am going to be setting up a meeting to get preapproved in the near future, and I know that will give me a better idea of where I stand. However, I haven't seen any questions about how much you can get preapproved for, versus how much you should actually spend. Is it generally true that you can afford what you get approved for? Moving on to the main question. I was hoping to stop all this theoretical bologna and get to the real meat of the subject. I wanted to get some responses from real people in real situations, fill out what you can. Thanks! 1) How much were you preapproved for (amount, interest rate, term)? 2) How much did you use from the loan? 3) How much did you put up front as a down payment? 4) How much are your monthly mortgage payments (and taxes/insurance too)? 5) How much is the annual gross income of your household? 6) How do you feel that the mortgage payments stack up against your income (are you living above/below your means? are you strapped for cash, or do you think you could've afforded a more expensive house? or is it just right?)? 7) Please feel free to add anything else about your situation that you feel adds to the discussion! Again, I know this is all personal information, so I'm hoping we can keep this all respectful (no knocking on people who took a mortgage too high during the boom or anything disrespectful altogether). Please respond with as much or as little information as you'd like. I just wanted to see if I could get some people to give some real world examples of how this works out, for all of us people who are thinking about buying now and are having a hard time getting any hard and fast evidence on how the system works. Thanks, in advance, to anyone participating!

• Answer:

  This is a great question and I hope a ton of people answer because I would also find this information invaluable. My fiance and I recently went in for a mortgage consultation, they pre approved us for $300,000 with a 10% down payment. I make $54,000 a year, and my fiance makes $30,000. I don't have the other information in front of me, but we have yet to decide how much of the loan we will actually use. We are in a very similar situation and are wondering how difficult it would be to manage the full loan amount, we will probably borrow around $260,000. Good luck to you!