Determining What You Can Afford in Lafayette

Lafayette Real Estate Video Blog with Robbie Breaux

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Do you know how much you can afford to spend on a home? When you’re looking to balance the budget on a home payment, you need to look at four things:

1. How much can you afford?
2. How much is a bank willing to lend monthly?
3. What does that translate to in sales price?
4. How much are you comfortable spending monthly?

Typically, banks will lend $6 to $7 a month for every thousand dollars you spend. On a $150,000 house, that translates to $800 to $900 a month, depending on the tax area you’re in and the monthly insurance premiums. How does the bank determine what your payment is? They’ll take your total income and divide it by the total debt that you have, like house payment, car payment, student loans, revolving debt like credit cards. On a $5,000 income, the banks would take approximately $2,000 a month in total monthly debt to be what they approve you for.

Just because a bank is willing to lend you $2,000 a month for you monthly payment doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what you need to spend. You need to do what’s right for your family. List out all the debts and outgoing payments you have like food, utilities, entertainment, and others, and write it down to see what your monthly income looks like, and how much you have left coming in.

If you have any other questions, please let us know via email or a phone call. We’d love to hear from you.