How much home?
The honest math.
Two different questions hide inside this one: what a lender will approve, and what your life can absorb. Good buying starts where those answers overlap.
By Dawn M. Muñoz · Stonehaven Lending · Updated August 13, 2026
Lenders size your budget with debt-to-income ratios: your full housing payment (principal, interest, taxes, insurance, HOA, mortgage insurance - all of it) against gross monthly income, and your total debt payments against the same. A common convention runs near 28% for housing and 36% overall, though real programs flex well beyond that with strong files. Whichever ratio you hit first sets your ceiling. The honest move is to compute both - our calculator does - and then buy below the ceiling, not at it.
PITI, not the sticker price.
Underwriting doesn't qualify you on a loan amount; it qualifies you on the full monthly payment - and so should you. Taxes and insurance routinely add hundreds a month and vary wildly by county and property; HOA dues and mortgage insurance stack on top. Two houses at the same price can carry very different payments. Shop with the full PITI number and the surprises disappear.
Which one is binding you?
The housing ratio caps the payment against income alone; the total-debt ratio caps it after your car payments, student loans, and card minimums. Buyers with clean balance sheets hit the housing cap - only income raises it. Buyers carrying debt hit the total-debt cap first - and for them, paying off a $400/month car loan raises the house budget far more effectively than a raise does. Knowing which ratio binds tells you exactly which lever moves your number.
The lender's yes is not the whole answer.
Approval math runs on gross income and listed debts. It doesn't know about your childcare, your savings rate, or the buffer that lets you sleep. A payment you qualify for at the top of the ratios can still be a payment that owns you. Our operations background makes us precise about the lender math - and our honesty policy makes us say plainly when the approvable number and the wise number aren't the same one.
The levers, ranked.
In rough order of power: pay down monthly debts (if the back-end ratio binds), increase the down payment, extend the term, improve credit so pricing and insurance drop, or add a co-borrower's income. Rates matter too - but you don't control them; these you do. Run scenarios in the calculator, then have a specialist confirm what programs will actually credit.
Have a specialist confirm what programs will credit.
The calculator illustrates; a specialist verifies against live guidelines - personally, within one business day, no credit pull at this stage.