<prompt> Human: Heya reddit,The wife and I both under 30 have both just been given 18 raises and weve been thinking its about time we get serious about buying our first home in the next 12 months. Weve done a bit of window shopping and a few model home tours and it seems that 300,000 is about what it will take to get something were really happy with in our area Baltimore County, Maryland . Were both pretty lousy with finances in general so were hoping someone with better sense for this kind of stuff can tell us if were crazy for thinking 300K is comfortably within our affordability range.Gross Income: 110K Me 84K her 26K Monthly Take Home: Roughly 6K after insurance, taxes, 10 401K etcSavings: Roughly 22K hoping to leave 5 digits for rainy day after down payment Current Monthly Expenses Rent: 1325 Phone: 150 TVInternet: 100 GasElectric: 125 Water: 35 Car Payment: 390 Web Hosting: 20 Misc Subscriptions: 20 Auto Insurance: 115 Renters Insurance: 25Total: 2305Other spending varies wildly but if Mint can be believed the only net negative month weve had all year was when we booked our vacation. Keep in mind the 18 raises only kick in this month. Also - this helps - no kids. My income is very stable and secure - hers not as much.My super stupid rough math puts a 300,000 house at about 1700-1800 monthly after a 20K down payment including taxes and insurance . This seems reasonable on our income but I feel like Im probably miscalculating or forgetting some important line item. For example I honestly have no idea how much money is involved in the actual shopping process inspections, closing, realtor costs, etc . Ive also heard you can pay off PMI early but have no idea how to calculate the cost of this.Can anyone lend a hand? :-Edit: If it changes anything know that MD has stupid expensive housing in general and 300K is actually below the average especially for the nicer suburbs near Baltimore.Another Edit: Thank you everyone for your responses. This got wayyy more attention than I had expected! The overall consensus seems to be that, while we can afford the monthly costs there are a lot of upfront costs we had not considered that would potentially wipe our our savings. I think were going to continue renting for at least another 6-12 months and save as much as we can while keeping our eyes peeled for homes similar to what weve been looking at but in the 250K or below range. Will also be keeping track of the average interest rates as Im told were at an all time low right now - will consider speeding up our timeline if we see it rising too much. Thank you all!Assistant: Rule of thumb you can borrow around 3x your income so yeah you could afford it on the numbers youve given.Youd put less than 20 down and so would pay a higher interest rate, PMI, or both, so Id account for that cost as well.Human: Im just reading about that 3x figure now - good to know its valid. I was accounting for PMI but not a higher interest rate. I just kind of looked up average rates and went with that - like 3.9. What would you consider to be a high rate?You can probably tell I know nothing about this hah. My parents and family all paid like 1-2 on their 50-60K houses back in the day and their only advice is why the fuck are you still renting?! .  <response>: House price 3x salary, as a rule of thumb, is a terrible way to figure out if the largest purchase of your life is going to turn out ok.Think about this - back in the day when interest was 8, the rule of thumb was 3x salary. More recently, when the interest rate was 3.5, it was still 3x salary. How the hell is that supposed to work? On a 270K loan that would be the difference between a 1980 and a 1210 mortgage. I would seriously doubt a 750month swing in mortgage is a small enough variation to ignore.OP - trust your numbers. A rule of thumb doesnt apply in all times, and certainly not in strange times like ours. Interest rates are abnormally low now, they have not been like this since the 1960s. 