Is there something wrong with this....

[nile455]

Yahoo's "How Much Home Can I Afford" calculator. I think there's something wrong with the formula.

Try it out, see if it gives you a result far below what you expected.

http://realestate.yahoo.com/calculators/afford.html;_ylt=AvifMJIooycmLga.whMcEASFH4p4

 

[kaytieeldr]

$38,000 So, yeah, more or less what I figured. Not that anyone would give me a mortgage at this point

 

[IDoDis]

$38,000 So, yeah, more or less what I figured. Not that anyone would give me a mortgage at this point

Mine came out higher than I thought at over 313K with a monthly mortgage payment of 1877.00 which is more than twice what we pay now. There's no way I'd ever go that high.

 

[Va-bear]

No, I'd say it was 'right on" (as compared to what a bank told us). It's actually quite a bit more than I"d be comfortable spending - it always is.

 

[kidzmom3]

looks like a little more than we would want to spend

 

[kirbsam]

mine was very high. probably accurate, but way more than i would ever spend.

 

[Beca]

Ummm....no. It came up with a home that is 2.5 times more expensive than what we actually purchased!!! It is WAAAAYYYYY off. I should show that to my dh though....he needs a good laugh!!!!!

 

[WDWAurora]

Double our current mortgage. I can assure you we can't pay double. While we could probably go a little higher, there's just no way double is even remotely possible.

 

[scrapquilter]

seems about right for me. Maybe you entered something wrong? The first time I tried it, I left off a zero on the gross income line...maybe that's your problem?

 

[jewjubean]

Wow..they gave me $65,000..not what I was expecting being a 20 Y/O server.Not that I'm going to buy a house anytime soon.

 

[etoiles]

Mine was in the range but a little bit higher than what we felt comfortable spending.

 

[Piecey]

It's close, I guess. More than we bought for.

We didn't ask the bank what we could get approved for, I told them how much we wanted and they said "Okay"...

 

[SandrA9810]

It gave me a house for 28,000$ with a monthly payment of like 200$.... heck I'd take a house at that price, I know I can't find an apartment with rent that cheap... and if I triple tha payments to what rent is costing us, it would be paid off in 10 years.
Any case, I've gotten much higher estimates using other calculators.

 

[tasha99]

It gave me about $88,000 which is insanely higher than I would have expected.

 

[golfgal]

Those things are always high, as are the bank estimates. We generally take those, cut them in half and then get a good idea of what we can "afford", which we already know anyway. We are silly in that we like to do things like EAT . We about died when we bought our first house and the bank told us we could afford about triple what we though we could.

 

[P.I. Squirrel]

The result matched what a mortgage broker told me during the housing boom back in 2005. When he told me he could qualify me for a $300,000 mortgage, I asked what planet he was from. There was no way we would be able to afford that monthly payment. Had I signed that mortgage, you would have been counting me in the foreclosure category.

IMO, it was promises such as that which led to the crisis we are in today. How many folks blindly listened to their brokers with no rational thought about their personal finances?

 

[Rence]

These formulas are designed to keep you "house poor" - yes you could probably afford it, but little else - you'd have to watch your budget closely and hope that nothing bad happens.

As a consumer you have just so much money to spend and each business would like to get as much of it as they can. These calculations were designed by lenders and real estate brokers who have a vested interest in you spending lots of money on housing and little money on everything else.

Expensive home means higher fees for the real estate broker and higher fees for the mortgage lender - the fact that you won't be seeing Disney again for 30 years is not their concern.

 

[MrsPete]

It's actually quite a bit more than I"d be comfortable spending - it always is.

Ditto for me. It says I can afford a $379,000 house. I actually live in a house that's worth about $150,000, and I'm quite satisifed with it.

Of course, one big thing this calculator is considering is your other debts. I have none.

 

[MrsPete]

These formulas are designed to keep you "house poor" - yes you could probably afford it, but little else - you'd have to watch your budget closely and hope that nothing bad happens.

As a consumer you have just so much money to spend and each business would like to get as much of it as they can. These calculations were designed by lenders and real estate brokers who have a vested interest in you spending lots of money on housing and little money on everything else.

Expensive home means higher fees for the real estate broker and higher fees for the mortgage lender - the fact that you won't be seeing Disney again for 30 years is not their concern.

Exactly. When DH and I were married in 1990 the saying was, "Buy as much house as you can as soon as you can", the idea being that it would appreciate in value. It was bad advice then, and it's bad advice now -- unless, of course, you like putting every penny you earn towards your house.

 

[Jestocost]

LOL

$1 million +

Not going to happen.