what is sensible/acceptable mortgage payments??

[littlemisslost]

I am wondering what % of income people are paying on their mortgages?
We are hoping to move later in the year and get larger mortgage,want to clear some old debts and get a better house. We don't earn big money but Im guessing our take home pay will be between £2700-£3000 month?
what is a managable sensible amount to be paying for a mortgage from that

I always thought that the conventional wisdom is that 25% of your joint take home pay is the max that you should spend on mortgage or rent to be comfortable and factor in unexpected things like interest rate rises. We stuck to that religiously even when we were being offered higher mortgage loans in pre-market crash days.

we pay about a quarter of our earnings on mortgage payments but our income has gone down quite a bit the last year or so and to be honest with oil, petrol and food costs, we are a family of 4, its a bit of a struggle.

Currently we're paying 75% towards the mortgage - but this is due to targeting overpayments with a view to finishing it early. If we stopped the overpayments and just made the regular payments (spread back over the full term) it would amount to 1% of our income per month, so I suppose it's mission accomplished regardless of the small outstanding capital left owing. Prior to this I think our monthly mortgage accounted for about 30% of our income.

since i gave up work, ours is about ?40% of dh's take home pay (1800, 762). it is grim and i wouldn't recommend it.

Ours is 10%.

Luckily i currently have a 40 percent deposit saved for my first home and i will buy when my mortgage payments will be around 20 percent of my net earnings. anything more than that is ridiculous in my eyes, i can understand that some people have to buy a home for various reasons so i consider myself lucky that i can wait for house prices to keep falling and hopefully achieve an acceptable level of mortgage.

Also to your further question of how people afford to buy a home without a sizeable deposit, well most will have to do what i did and save every penny i possibly could in the last 4 to 5 years to gain the deposit for the house.

saying that though It might well become possible again soon to get a mortgage with a 5percent deposit or even no deposit seeing as the banks are getting up to their old tricks again. They could start throwing anybody and everybody however much money they want again which will send house prices soaring again just like last time.

I wish id been born a few years earlier so i could have bought a home before the housing market became such a joke.

Ours is 40%. I would say that is near average for most people I know. Thats for a flat though.

Ours was 20% pre DD with both of us working full time. 4 years on its now 41% of MY take home pay now that DH isn't earning with his fledgling business (he was made redundant). It's just about manageable, if the rates go up we will be screwed, it's not a thought I relish as we've always been financially secure.

20%

20% is comfortable.

I also think doing it as a percentage is misleading. Ours is about 36% of our joint income and we have nothing left at the end of the month, its really tight at the moment till we stop paying for childcare.