How much is your mortgage?

[melanie18]

We are in the process of buying a house (we've been in our 1st home for 12 years). We are by no means, wealthy...not even in the 6 figures.

Our current mortgage is about $1300/month. To move up in our area, our mortgage would be about $2200/mo...I'm getting heart palpitations thinking about it. According to all of the home loan calculators on the internet (I think I've been on all of them), the mortgage company and my husband, we can afford it...it's me that's having the problem.

We have our eye on a house that would put our DD in the exact schools we want her in (she's 4 now)...and the house has everything we are looking for (except that it's got a pool...I'm not too crazy about that).

For those of you who have moved, what is your current mortgage compared to your last mortgage (inc. property tax & ins.). Was it a major adjustment? Do you regret it? I picture myself strugging to make the mortgage every month.



BTW, on top of all of this, we leave for WDW at the end of the month...talk about timing.

 

[gymnasticsmom68]

That's a little personal, I don't even tell my family those kinds of things.

 

[AZKathy]

We moved a little over three years ago and our mortgage went up only $300/month with our new home, so we did not feel a big change. I don't think we could increase our mortgage as much as you are, but you know your budget and obviously you can handle it or your mortgage company would not approve it, right? Enjoy your new home and have a great trip!

 

[kimwim8]

We moved a little over a year ago, and our mortgage (including taxes & insurance) went up about $400/month. We struggled with that decision for a while, but we realized that with a few years of surviving, and not saving...we'll be ok. Our kids will both be out of daycare in 3-ish years. So we'll be saving a ton of money when that happens!

 

[mudnuri]

We've never moved, still in our first home, HOWEVER if my mortgage was 1300 to begin with I'd FREAK!

We are looking at houses now, have not put our house on the market yet, basically getting a feel for whats where we want to go etc... and our mortgage will probably end up about 1000 a month...of course, we only have 7 years left on this mortgage, so we have one heck of a down payment after this sells!....

Brandy

 

[PooohBear]

You really have to decide what's important to you, that's a really big jump !!! I never listen to the mortgage calculators, they always think you can afford more than you really can !! Are you living very comfortable now !? do you have that much "extra" money every month to save ?! and most important of all.... would you have to give up going to disney !??! you have to consider things like that !!!!

 

[miste76]

Wow, I've got you all beat... my mortgage is a whopping $470 a month right now. And it's all I can afford (still a student.) I'm hoping that my mortgage will go up by 4x that when i finally move. But then again, maybe I'd be smart to stay here and save for a while first!!!

 

[Elwood Blues]

Originally posted by miste76
Wow, I've got you all beat... my mortgage is a whopping $470 a month right now. And it's all I can afford (still a student.) I'm hoping that my mortgage will go up by 4x that when i finally move. But then again, maybe I'd be smart to stay here and save for a while first!!!

You're "hoping"?

 

[LisaSt]

A mortgage company will always giver you the max of what THEY feel you can afford. Now wether you really can is another thing what if something came up and you needed to say buy a new car or one of you for some reason had to stop working for a period of time would it still be possible to pay the mortgage. That is some of the things you should look at before taking the mortgage companies word on it. Our mortgage is a whole 510 dollars a month Canadian that is PIT in. at our next renwal date we are going to build as we have a buyer for our current home and it will give us a very large downpayment on the new place.

 

[Lisa F]

Mortgage calculators are always overly aggressive. You should sit down with a budget and figure out if you can afford it or not... the online calculator is not going to be making your payments for you.

Without going into financial details I will say that we worked really hard to get into the market in the metro NY area. We really had to stretch more than we would have liked to. On the other hand, if we didn't, we would not have gotten something decent and would have had to pay as much as we are paying now, if not more, in rent. If we had a third choice, ie stay put in a house that was more affordable, we would have (we went from renting to owning).

Really the best way to tell if you can afford the payments is to put the extra $900/month into savings for 6 months and see how it feels. If it's too tight, don't do it. If you don't feel pinched then you will have a nice chunk of change to spend on something for your new house.

 

[BETTYDISNEY]

We are closing on our first home on October 15 and our mortgage payment will be 2370.00 without tax. I dont feel really overwhelmed becauses we are now paying 2050.00 for something that is not ours!!! Mortgages in MA are really high but I guess you have to decide if this is what you really want and are willing to sacrifice a little more for. We did so our son could go to a really good high school. Really excited we go to HHN October 1 and come back on the 6 and get ready to close on the 15th. Wish me luck, I dont know which one to be more freaked out by!!!

betty

 

[Poohnatic]

Is that 2200 even after including the proceeds from the sale of your current home? If so, YIKES! I don't envy you.

Two things to ask yourself:

If one of you should get laid off, can you survive with that payment?

If one of you became ill, would it break the bank?

Not being a party pooper, both things happened to DH and I after we bought our first home together. It definitely impacted on what we would do when we moved. We are now about to close on constructing a new home-we can cover all our bills with half of my salary. Our proceeds from the other house helped us to put 30% down. Now, if only the rental wasn't so much-we're paying this person's mortgage and they didn't put that much down, lol! Once we move out of the rental and start paying the mortgage instead, we'll free up lots of $$

Suzanne

 

[tar heel]

When we bought our current house, our third, we raised our mortgage payment by a lot (not quite as much as you're talking about, though). If I had it to do over again, I'm not sure I would go as high as we did. The mortgage isn't the only expense that go up -- utilities, for example, are going to be more. I have no idea what kind of cost is associated with a pool, but I'm sure there are some.

You really can't trust your lender to tell you how much you can afford. The amount they will let you borrow is too much unless you are quite high income or don't have a lot of other expenses.

 

[ear_poppin]

This will bring tears to your eyes ( it does to mine ! ) ours is $2860 per month !!

Oh well only 20 more years of it !!

Denise

 

[IMGONNABE40!]

I once worked for a woman in Greenich, CT. Her office was in her home. One day I was asked to take care of getting the mortgage payment out. I almost fell over to see that the payment was over $17,000! Yes, that was the monthly payment!

 

[ladydancer]

DD and her family had lived with us for over a year while building there dream house. They were afraid to move in fear they couldn't afford the new house. I kept telling her that with the falling interest rates and them being there own contractor on there new home and family helping build it, there payment would be with-in a couple hundred of what they were paying already.

A friend offered to buy there house. So they couldn't refuse the offer.

They just closed on there new home last week my daughter came over and said "you were right, mom" Our new mortage is actually less than our old one. Almost $100 less. I did explain to her that it wouldn't be less actually because that does not included taxes and ins. When all is said and done it will be a couple hundred more I'm sure but they are in such a bigger, beautiful and new house.

There payment for 30 years is just under $1300.00 not including taxes and ins.. There house is also sitting on 5 1/2 acres of land.

 

[DawnCt1]

It doesn't matter anymore because in 4 years, we are done. We refinanced 11 years ago for a 15 year mortgage. It's at a higher rate than the prevailing rates now, but we are paying mostly principal so someone would have to offer us a 1% mortgage to lower our monthly payments. In four years we will look for a vacation home.

 

[keri1971]

I highly suggest doing the 6 month savings of $900 a month as suggested earlier. Too many people are house rich-then they get into some unforseen financial trouble-what options are they left with? If you do go forward with purchasing the house-absolutely get a 30 year not a 15 year. The rates are so low right now-it's cheap money to borrow. If you have extra then pay more towards principal if it makes you feel better but I wouldn't recommend that either personally. I would take that extra money(if this arises someday) and have it automatically debited into an investment fund. The compounding interest will make you a fortune if you let it sit there. I will email again later with the names of two books I suggest everybody read. Too early to make sure I get them right. Sorry for rambling-I'm a CPA with a day off!!LOL

 

[Deafmedic]

$1430/month for a 5 BR/4.5 bath on 2 acres in a gated community of 26 homes. All of us built our own homes. Community fees are $2000/year which pays for security and 2 neighborhood parties/year in spring and fall.

 

[Christine]

I currently pay $1445 per month for my mortgage. That keeps changing, unfortunately, because the assessed values keep increasing and so does my annual real estate tax!! I have refinanced once from a 6% loan to a 5.12% loan. I can't go any lower. My DH and I do make six figures together. Both of our kids are in private schools, so we do have that tuition as well as their activities (which are not that bad). I do not have any other debt. With that, I feel like I can pay the bills, but I am unable to really save any money on my own. I cannot imagine having a mortgage of $2200 and not even pulling six figures. That seems very precarious to me.

Please don't trust the mortgage calculators. When I bought my last house (the one I'm in now), they qualified me for a house that was about $150,000 more than I than the one I purchased. The one I purchased was about the max I could really afford. Even almost 10 years later, I still struggle with the payment.