What % of income is reasonable to borrow?

[MyDogHumpsThings]

I’m looking to move house. My husband and I have stable jobs with no immediate concerns, but I still worry about the future, given the financial climate and the susceptibility of both our jobs to being replaced by AI at some point. For reference, I’m in my early 40s and he’s mid-50s, so we both have a significant period of work ahead of us.

We currently pay 17% of our combined net income on our mortgage and have 11 years left. We’re not mumsnet rich by any means, but our current low mortgage means we do have some money to save and play with.

Anyway, long story short: I’m being seduced by beautiful houses that the mortgage calculators tell me we can afford, but I’m uncomfortable having basic expenses that couldn’t be covered by one of our wages in the event that one of us loses our job.

I realise many families require two wages to pay their expenses and that this isn’t a choice many people get to make. If they have to do it, why should I be so precious about not exceeding one of our incomes on basic expenses? Is it greedy? Or should I not tempt fate by being greedy for a nicer house? My current house is lovely, I just want to move further away from other humans!

How much of your income would you be comfortable spending on mortgage or rent?

I personally think it’s worth stretching to something that really ticks the boxes and keeps you happy long term (I would absolutely move due to parking!), we started out conservative and it limited us with lack of equity built. At the end of the day unless the housing market completely crashes long term it’s an asset that you can leverage, if you need to release equity or downsize down the line you’ll have more options than if you stayed put (unless you invested cleverly in other ways).

I think we are at about 25% now, it was higher when we bought 5 years ago, but wages have increased. (But ultimately a ratio is limited value as we have a relatively high income so 25% is less for us than it would be for others).