To go for the highest mortgage offered?

Like @Icanttakethisanymore I’ve always gone for the biggest mortgage I can afford and taken the risk on pay rises making it more affordable and house prices rising so LTV ration improves for remortgaging. Then my house is not only the home I want now but also a nest egg for the future. But only you will know how risk adverse you are and how much disposable income that will leave you with.

If you think it would enable you to jump a step on the property ladder and all the associated costs of a move, legal, stamp duty, EA charges, then I think it could be considered financially prudent, providing you don’t overstretch yourselves with the mortgage costs.

From my own experience, no I wouldn't do it. We were offered £100k more than we ended up borrowing. I will be thankful for the rest of my life that we didn't take it for the sake of it. We would've been crippled beyond belief when mortgage rates went up.

It depends. If you live in London and need to borrow the max just to get something siitable then you'll have to do that. If you live elsewhere where you can buy what you need for less than the max you can borrow do that and invest the difference in your payments in your pension or S&S.

My PILs have a gorgeous big house in an expensive city but it's a struggle for them in retirement to maintain it and they don't have accessible savings, but they won't move because they want us to inherit, never mind that their children will all be in their 60s by the time they die and there will be IHT to pay. My parents have similar value of assets but they aren't all locked in their property, they downsized and have a modern house in a beautiful location and have money to spend and have started gifting to reduce IHT. We've followed my parents and did not overextend ourselves on our mortgage and so have good savings and a nice standard of living.

Personally I wouldn’t, not with interest rates the way they are at this point in time. We had multiple neighbours who did that and had to sell at re-fixing time because what had been a stretch on their original interest rate was now completely unaffordable with the new one.

Not worth the risk, and honestly, live a little with your money instead. Choose a house you can comfortable afford and use the extra for fun, farms, holidays, camping, trips away, theme parks… life is for living.

I would always go for the biggest mortgage you could afford because you get the benefit of a nicer / bigger home and you get the benefit of more exposure to the property market (which has historically been a good thing). That's very much my personality though, I quite 'ambitious' when it comes to property (which has so far worked out very well) but I fly closer to the wind than lots of people would want to so it's very much a personal choice.

So AINBU to go for a more expensive house and maybe take on the highest mortgage offered?
Or AIBU and it will stretch us too far and be a horrible stress?

How do you expect anyone to answer that without any financial information?