Skip the income multiple. What matters is the monthly payment against how you actually live, and that's a debt-to-income question. The 30-year fixed helps here: the payment caps your worst-case interest cost while leaving you free to pay it down faster or refinance later if the math works. When someone asks what they can afford, we honestly can't know from the outside. A high income with heavy discretionary spending can feel tight, and a modest income spent deliberately can carry more house than any multiple suggests. The honest range runs between two ends: - Very conservative: a 15-year loan, 20% down, housing under roughly 25% of net income. - Aggressive: FHA files with automated (AUS) approval top out at 46.99% housing and 56.99% total DTI. Those figures reflect how FHA's TOTAL Scorecard behaves in practice (push past them and the system tends to refer the file to manual underwriting) rather than a printed HUD cap, and actual approval still depends on the AUS findings, compensating factors, and lender overlays. Most people who stretch that far have some other cushion that makes them comfortable there. So the real rule of thumb is to know yourself and your actual spending, then work out your numbers. A free Roadmap conversation (about 20 minutes) is where we run yours.