Could I ask what combined household salary....

[Imjustwonderingnow]

You have, gross per annum. Just out of interest, if you bought a house/living in your own home that cost between £1M and £1.2M? Know some factors will influence this like deposit.... But let's assume you've put down 20% to 30% deposit... and let's assume you nought it in the last 5 years and not decades ago for cheap and its NOW worth thst much....I'm asking as we can't agree snd DH thinks we'd over leverage ourselves but I think he's always risk averse. But maybe I should be too... please help me out if you wouldn't mind sharing??

What others may have is irrelevant to you. Sort out your income if you need to know what’s affordable for you.

Thanks for the responses so far - I know it's very nuanced and lots of variables . I perhaps should have rather asked "if this is your situation - please give a high level view of your earnings and situation" so I get some context .
I know the guidelines - but many people I know pay almost 50% of their net income into their mortgage...
I think from some of the responses where you have shared your own situation - the combined income does seem to be a lot higher than ours and I think this is the crux of it.
We would be paying almost 50% of take home into mortgage . We wouldn't look to pay the mortgage off though as would downsize to the countryside and buy outright from the equity after a few years. I'm not sure if this puts a different spin on it but thanks to those who shared their own experiences and to the posters with some basic financial rules!
I guess chatgpt overstated our possibilities 😛

Very helpful - why so sour ?

Same scenario as you OP. Bought our house (just over £1m) last year. Combined household income £250k. We could have gone higher but wanted to have holidays / lifestyle etc.

Thanks for sharing ! Omg the childcare is insane !! Luckily will come to and end at some point buy yes - very lucky to have fixed. What will you do when that offer ends though ?

50% of take home on a mortgage is fine if you take home 10k a month. Not so clear cut if you take home 3k a month. The ‘third’ of your income thing is a rule of thumb only, and designed for the low to average earners (which isn’t 10k take home a month).

This is interesting - can you share why advised against given healthy investments ?

Good lord, not this again

Thank you !! Did you have a similar deposit? Anything you wish you did differently ?

We had a similar deposit yes (about 25%). We took a little money out of the equity from the sale of previous house (£50k) thinking we would do a big renovation but now wishing we had just increased the deposit because the renovation with 2 x full time jobs and kids is not going to happen and we don’t need to do the work. We are in our 40s so a big mortgage is kind of terrifying, when we stop and think. But, we have the disposable income to increase the payments next time we renew the mortgage (3 years) and we are already overpaying.

I'm fairly confident it will be fine for various reasons.

We arent obsessed with being mortgage free...Money is just energy.

At 10 yr mark we will have 440k max owing so 40% ltv so will be able to access preferential products.
We may remortgage for more and leverage the delta tbh.

I'm also not convinced we will stay the uk the entire time so may be moot.

We having savings so could start tapping that if we wanted. I doubt we would though...

What i would say is i ran the scenarios carefully so when my dh was blithely booking viewings for 1.5m places (because they would lend us over 1m!) and saying we could afford it...it was me who said "hmmmm we cant afford it now... but what about in 5 years?"

We bought in that range about a decade back. £400k pre-tax household income iirc.

Our joint income is around £80k and our house was just over £1m in 2021, however due to inheritances and a flat sale, we had a £650k deposit. No way we could have afforded it otherwise. So our income vs house price isn't very helpful to you - everyone has such different circumstances!

We are moving today!! £1.2m house, 25% deposit. SDLT is the hardest part to swallow.

Combined £250k income (even split) but we also own a business with reliable revenue we don’t remove.

One kid in nursery but this wasn’t asked about and didn’t impact our affordability. No debt other than mortgage, not even a CC outstanding, no cars on finance or anything like this.