Hellobee Boards

We bought a house at the top of our budget, and I regret it - we have been here 2 years and just in the past 4 months has our salaries grown enough to make it comfortable. And I hate thinking about how much our mortgage is.

Our prob was that we let how much the bank would approve us for determine our budget and bought a house just $7K less than the max we could borrow

ETA: not that we couldn't pay our bills, but we couldn't travel or even take weekend trips like I wanted to for the first year without using credit cards. (Side note CC debt free now yay)

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to look a little bit past your budget. You could always make an offer that brings the house back into your budget, and the worst the seller can do is say no. A more expensive house may also need less work, or be in a more convenient location, making it more affordable than you think.

No, don't do it (too much, anyway)! We recently bought a house that we paid just $5k over our original max budget. During house hunting we increased the budget by $100,000 and I was determined to purchase closer to the original max. Buy what you can comfortably afford in case stuff happens. In our case, an unexpected A/C purchase given the way unit passed with flying colors at the inspection.

Good luck!

Definitely. We really want a 4/3 but sooo much more money than a 3/2.

Nope. It's not worth it to me. We set a low max, not determined by the bank, in order to not tempt ourselves. I do enjoy looking at the listings that I can't afford, though

We wish that we had looked above our top line budget when we first moved here. We might not have needed to move again. Ah well, we didn't know we were always going to call our town home.

No! We have had runs of unemployment in the past, so we have been very careful not to go over our budget. It isn't worth the stress to worry about keeping our home if we had hard times again, especially since I'm making half my original income being part-time now.

thankfully we were only approved for 20k above budget so that would have been the absolute tip-top we could have done! We never really looked over our budget... because of that we didn't end up with a house but looking back I'm glad we didn't settle. I like the "freedom" that renting gives us for now

We did but only within what we thought could be negotiated down to our budget! It worked and were in a great home.

I love reading these answers, since we are house hunting ourselves!

We did. We ended up paying $50k more than our "budget" but it wasn't set in the stone. We feel like it was good to max out. We are not strained and will not have to ever move again if that is what we choose. I love our house!

Nope. I look at that top of our budget (which is really below what we can actually afford) and then look for houses we think we can get a good deal on.

@caffeinated: our first agent wasn't very strategic with us. He could have shown us all kind of options, but he acted really constrained by our original wish list. He didn't even want to show us the house we bought (which I loved), because it wasn't a good layout in his opinion. I had to push him to see it.

Meanwhile, our new house was on the market at that time too, but was above our budget so he didn't show it. No matter, we eventually found it!

Nope. Our max budget was waaaay less than the bank would have approved us for. And we weren't willing to go over it. There are so many people in foreclosure because they wanted more than they could afford. Hubs and I put 20% down and bought a house that gave us a mortgage payment that we could still pay if one of us lost our job. We certainly could have bought a much bigger house but we love our house and a 1900sqft 3/2 is plenty big enough for two adults and a baby.

My dad always says to buy a house at the top of your budget because you'll be happier in it for longer, it'll force you to live frugally (since you will be pouring money into your mortgage, which is a good investment anyway), and it will motivate you to continue to earn more and more money each passing year. It definitely worked for him-- my parents built their dream family home when I was in 3rd grade. They spent about $400k for the land and building it all out. They sold it 18 years later, after I graduated from college for more than double!

That being said, I think when we buy our next home (hopefully in the next year) we will either max out our budget or buy within our budget and renovate room by room.

When I bought my house (when I was single), I did end up buying a house "over my price range", by what seemed like a lot. I originally was looking at condos in the $155,000 range and ended up buying a townhouse around $185,000.

*however*, after running the numbers, I realized that the condos I liked had monthly HOA/maintenance fees of anywhere from $300-$600, and the townhouse had only a small common front yard mowing fee of $50/month.

So, the monthly payments for me were pretty much the same, so I went with the bigger (and more expensive) townhouse with the lower monthly fees.

I still miss my Texas house! I thought it was small there, but it's so huge compared to 2 bedrooms here.--1600 sq feet! I'm currently renting it out. I just can't bear to part with it yet.

In the beginning we strictly looked at houses within our budget. After a few months of searching we looked into the houses in my ideal neighborhood that I thought was out of reach. Turns out that it wasn't much more and very feasible. We ended up finding our perfect house, and it was only $5k above our original set limit after negotiating. We could have settled for a starter home but ended up with our forever home by being more flexible with our limit.