How To Buy a Brownstone?
I am a first time buyer…I have over 750 credit…can I qualify to buy a home over $850,000 with less than $150,000 income? How do you buy a home based on potential rental income?
I am a first time buyer…I have over 750 credit…can I qualify to buy a home over $850,000 with less than $150,000 income? How do you buy a home based on potential rental income?
I was just estimating what the bank will loan the OP. How comfortable you personally feel like spending on housing is an entirely different question.
Err, sorry Heather, that came out way more accusatory than I meant it. I just meant that presuming you’re relatively debt-free and such, it should be possible to make the payments on a $500k mortgage, on $150k/yr or more, and still have money for things like clothes and food.
I guess it comes down to the definition of “afford”. 🙂
Between the two of us, our family unit makes about 100K (more like 85K reliable) and we are easily paying a $500K mortgage and paying for a renovation with cash (until very recently).
Which makes me think that *we* are the cheap ones. We don’t buy other things very much. We eat well, but buy used clothes, don’t travel much, etc.
Maybe I’m just cheap.
If you make more than $150k and can’t afford a $500k mortgage, you’re probably doing something wrong. Or have kids. Kids are really expensive.
We don’t miss all the noise from upstairs above us in our old coop either, but keep in mind with brownstones you can get noise from adjacent neighbors next door. It can be more noise than you’d think depending on the neighbors and on how the houses were built and if they were built together at the same time which leaves gaps and shared joists for sound to travel through.
We make more than you and I don’t think we can afford $500K… so… I guess my advice would be no, you can’t. And you shouldn’t.
The biggest problem I have with condos is: I don’t want the guy who lives below me hammering on the ceiling every time I walk across my living room without taking off my shoes or every time my cats decide to chase each other around, a problem which happens in the apartment I currently rent. Similarly, I don’t want to have to listen to people tromping around above me.
Apartment life sucks. The whole reason I want to buy is to get away from sharing a building with other people.
I would never even entertain the idea of buying a condo. I don’t particularly care for new. The idea of spending years restoring a brownstone is actually very appealing to me. That’s why I read this site.