Larry Blanchard wrote in
:

On Sat, 20 Jun 2015 17:26:14 +0000, John McCoy wrote:

My Dad used to say the house you could afford was 4x your salary. Of
course, he was saying that in the days of 8%
or 10% mortages, but still, I doubt folks in that area have anything
close to $150k annual incomes. They must be hurting to have to pay
that much for a house.

It's not the house price, it's the size of the mortgage. And your
father was liberal. I always heard that a mortgage should not exceed
3 times your annual income. But with 20% down, the bank approved 4x
for us.

Well, in that day and age the 30 year, 20% mortgage was pretty
much the only thing going. So his 4x house price, less 20% is
pretty close to your 3x mortgage.

Myself, I'd be uncomfortable with 1/3d my income going to house
payments. I was a lot more conservative when I bought my house.

John