Are you looking to purchase a home in 2019? Many people buy a house outside of their price range and end up in a huge financial mess. This doesn’t have to be you! Before you get ready to purchase a house, you should check out our Mortgage Payment Calculator to help you decide how much house you can really afford.

Before you purchase a house, you should consider a couple of things:

How much should you spend on housing? Generally speaking, you should spend about 25% of your take home pay on housing. This amount can change depending on the amount of debt you carry. If you have no debt, you can likely accommodate up to 33% of your take home pay on housing. If you have a high amount of debt, you should probably only spend about 18-20% of your take home pay on housing.

How much of a down payment should you have? You should put down AT LEAST 5% down on a house.

How much should you borrow to buy a house? Generally, you could spend between two to three times your annual income on a home. This means if you make $75,000 a year, your mortgage should range from $150,000 to $225,000.

Once you have this calculator pulled up, all you have to do is enter the expected interest rate, the number of months of the mortgage period and the amount of the expected loan. You can use estimates to calculate potential mortgage payments. You can then use this number to help you decide how large of a mortgage payment your budget can really accommodate.

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