<prompt> Human: Hi PF, I just graduated college a month ago and I got a job. I moved closer to my job and Im currently renting. Assets: Salary: 70kyearChecking:4,000 Brokerage: 2,000 have not bought any equities yet Liabilities: Debt: 0 spoiled by parents Rent: 775 month Down the future, I want to get a mortgage loan to buy a place to live in, so that I pay a mortgage instead of a rent. Ideally, I want to get a million dollar mortgage loan because I read on FinancialSamurai.com! that it gets you the largest tax deduction. However, I think that a million dollar house will be too much house for me, so I was wondering if it is possible to take a million dollar mortgage loan, and only spend half of it it on a house. However, I know from my life experiences that you dont get what you want by telling people what you want. You get it by giving other people what they want first. From my current understanding, I think that banks want to give out a low risk loan so they can make money off my interest without having to worry about a default. What can I do now, as a 21 year old college graduate to make my 26 or 31 year old self look like an extremely low risk loan applicant?  <response>: As others mentioned you cannot get a million dollar loan on a 500k home, the home is the collateral sooo no. 1. But if you want a 500k home read up on jumbo loans anything over 417K is considered a large loan referred to as jumbo2. Save 20 for down payment, so 100K and bank roughly about 10K-15K for the cost of doing the loan this varies of course based on the loanlender but you get the general idea3. Make sure that your credit score is around 760 on all bureaus.4. Try to keep your monthly debt payments no more than 20 of your monthly gross salary to have some wiggle room for your DTI. This is important later on when the lender will calculate your Debt to Income ratios, which cannot go over a certain percentage based on certain loan products. You can read more about this here5. Be ready to provide documentation to your lender as needed Also, be prepared to provide more documentation to meet conditions and for the whole process to take between 30-45 days more or less.6. Shop around for a mortgage first see what you can afford and on what terms - your goals might change between now and 5 years, get a couple of quotes from different lenders. Then get a pre-approval from a lender and give it to your real estate agent to make it faster to put an offer on a property you like.Good luck. 