There is a big difference between mindlessly scrolling through Zillow and perusing what’s out there on the market and sitting down to figure out how much house you can really afford. Making the steps to actually save for a house and begin to search in earnest for your new home in CA are two very exciting checkpoints on the way to home ownership. Somewhere in between all of the saving, planning, and looking is the actual number-crunching that will tell you how much house you can actually afford in CA.
What often starts with casual musings, a glance at your bank statements, and maybe a casual conversation at the dinner table quickly changes to logistical and strategic thoughts about how to swing a mortgage payment in CA. After you’ve got a number in mind that’s feasible — then it’s time to decide if you can truly afford that monthly payment or not and still maintain a lifestyle you enjoy.
Luckily, working with a great loan officer, like Steven Tavera and figuring out what your interest rate could be is a great starting point. Once you have that, your loan officer and a dozen different calculators across Google can easily crunch the numbers for you. [company name] offers a great calculator if you’re just playing around with numbers before contacting a professional to get the process started.
There are two main factors to consider when asking yourself how much house you can afford. One is how much monthly can you afford to pay towards a mortgage and the other is do you have the cash on hand (or coming) to fix what either needs to be fixed or you want to update. There’s not much worse than spending your hard-earned savings on a fixer-upper because it’s all you can qualify for and then not being able to make the improvements in a timely manner.
