So we are looking for our first family home in San Diego. We want a house we can spend the next 20 years in. We are currently a family of 3, hoping to be 4 soon.
For what we want, in the area we want, we are looking at approximately a million dollar mortgage, AFTER putting 20% down. A million is a lot of money!! But inventory is really low here, which is pushing prices up unfortunately.
How big is your mortgage compared to income?
128 votes
bananas / 9227 posts
Our mortgage is about 2.5x our net. I'm not sure about our gross, we pay a whole lot of taxes and it's a little complicated to calculate it here (plus, it's all magically deducted for you).
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
Interesting poll question!
Currently, between 1-2. We want to move soon. When we do, it will be 2-3.
coconut / 8472 posts
Our mortgage started out about $35k more than what we make annually now. Though I initially bought the house myself and it was between 2-3x what my annual salary was.
pomegranate / 3113 posts
Ours was about 2.15x our gross combined salaries when we signed on the dotted line; it's now down to just about 2x. Of course, the monthly payment amount hasn't changed so it doesn't really make much difference!
GOLD / pomegranate / 3938 posts
I bought my condo myself. Now that I'm married, I'm hoping DH and I can move up soon. I wish I had a million dollar budget though!! That's about how much the houses I feel I should be in cost!! I live in Orange County and have champagne taste on a total beer budget!!
apricot / 373 posts
@Myicitygirl: We just bought a single family home in LA, and man oh man, I never thought I would spend so much money.
apricot / 364 posts
We're currently in contract on both our current and the new. But the new is a very lateral move with lots of projects in our future. Trying to get to the point where my income is not necessary just to give us more flexibility. Also college will cost a fortune by the time LO is that old. Might be doomed to small houses for ever.
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
Ours is a little more than 1.5, we put down 25%. We could have bought more house for more money, but we wanted a bit of protection in case one of us decided not to work any more or we both decided to reduce our hours.
GOLD / wonderful pomegranate / 28905 posts
Between 1 and 2x of our combined gross income.
blogger / coconut / 8306 posts
Our purchase price is 1.5x our combined income, but we owe less. We bought our house 4 years ago.
pomegranate / 3225 posts
@Myicitygirl: DH and I are most likely moving to San Diego this fall/winter. Totally overwhelmed after looking at housing prices! Where did you end up buying? We are going to rent the first year until we figure out where to live... but renting is so expensive too! I'm grateful for any and all SD advice 
apricot / 294 posts
@kml636: because of our children and DH's work location, we were only looking in the Torrey Hills and Carmel Valley communities in North County (think tract home suburbia, solid schools) and we bought in Torrey Hills.
Do you know where you will be working? If you want to be closer to downtown, shopping, and restaurants, I recommend looking at the UTC area. Rents will be lower and there are plenty of apartments. The community has a more youthful feel because of the college student population.
As far as buying, SD has so many different communities, it depends on your criteria for buying. Do you want to be near the beach communities, like Mission Beach? In the northern suburbs with good schools, like Carmel Valley? In a walkable downtown neighborhood like Kensington Heights?
I am not an expert on SD because we have only lived here 2 years, but I am happy to try to answer any questions you have.
apricot / 294 posts
@travellingbee: salary before tax. I was a bit shocked at home prices here, and was trying to determine the ratio with which I could be comfortable. I know home prices really vary by area, but I wanted to do an unscientific survey.
nectarine / 2220 posts
We live in what's reportedly the 2nd most unaffordable housing city in the world.
The average single family home is 9x the average household income. Pretty much what would be considered a crack shack tear down in almost any other city sells for over 1M.
Our personal mortgage though was initially 2x our combined gross income. However it's a teeny tiny condo an hour and a half drive from downtown, and we have two near 6 figure salaries... sigh.
papaya / 10560 posts
Equal to or just a little less than our income. I could never live in a place where my mortgage was 2-3 times my income. Meaning that, I just don't know if I could bear the financial burden.
grapefruit / 4819 posts
We've just taken out a mortgage for slightly less than 4x DH's salary. We're a single income family living in a very expensive part of England so anything less than that wouldn't have met our needs. Four times income is the standard loan ratio here; we were pre-approved for 4.5x DH's income but really didn't want to go that high.
It doesn't feel like a burden to us though - our monthly mortgage payment, plus insurance and council taxes, is still only 34% of DH's take home pay, seems pretty reasonable and comfortable to us. We also kept a fairly large retainer in our savings account though so we're not living pay check to pay check either, which may make a bit of a difference.
hostess / papaya / 10219 posts
@Myicitygirl: ok thanks. Then it's slightly more than 1x our annual salary.
kiwi / 705 posts
Ours only has about a fourth of our annual salaries left on it, but we bought a major fixer upper in a bad neighborhood (the neighborhood has really picked up which is what we were counting on and some of the sales prices now are double our purchase price for little bitty houses whereas ours are huge.) That being said we're very motivated to pay it off but once we do we're going to dive back in to some major renovations. I'd say we'll put another $100k into it (we've already spent more then that on repairs, but some were wrapped into our mortgage).
grapefruit / 4187 posts
Our current mortgage is 2.5, but the mortgage on our new home will be about .75. WE are going to LOVE not living at the top of our budget, lol!
nectarine / 2262 posts
Ours is about 2.3 of gross. I didn't do that calculation until now. Hmm, interesting to know.
pear / 1946 posts
We just bought our first place and it's about 3x. We live in Southern California, though, so it's pretty impossible to find anything "affordable"
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