This is a guest post
It’s an interesting time to live in my house. Why? We’re putting it up for sale. Finally.
Selling our house is something we’ve wanted to do for years but haven’t been able to do for a variety of reasons. But we realized we couldn’t keep putting it off. Our neighborhood makes me uncomfortable (well, that kicked in after a neighbor shot and killed her ex-husband after he broke into her house), we’ve outgrown the house, and I’m really tired of townhouse living. So it’s time to move into a single family house. But there’s one nagging question that we keep coming back to: how much can we borrow without overextending ourselves?
There are some…changes that are happening in the next few months (I’m not pregnant. I swear it) and we have to make sure that our mortgage stays at or below our current level. We’re struggling with finding a house in our price range that, with our sad little down payment, will keep our mortgage at that amount. To deal with the situation, we’ve had to drastically change where we’re going to live. It’s not a decision we’ve entered into lightly and, although we haven’t given up on our dream location, we’ve both had to be grown-ups and realize that this new area is, overall, better for us. Especially financially. I refuse to ever be house poor again.
To make sure this doesn’t happen, I’m being very meticulous when it comes to how much we can afford. When we’re looking at houses in the new area, one of the tools we use is that handy mortgage calculator that’s at the end of every MLS listing. It’s nice to be able to plug in our down payment amount and get a rough estimate of what the mortgage will be. I can do some future budgeting and planning based on that and what I know our steady income will be. It’s a relief knowing that, before we get our hopes up about a house, if we can even afford it.
Buying a new house is going to be a long and tedious event for us (and I promise to share it all with you). Even more so this time around since now we know what we’re doing. But identifying how much house we can afford is the first step in our house hunting process.
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