<prompt> Human: Hi pf, I hope you can tolerate yet another how much house can we afford question. The reason I ask is because I want to hear from actual homeowners if all the various Zillowetc calculators are actually realistic. We plan to buy in about 9 months - 1 year next April-JuneWe bring home 6-9k monthly after tax. My hours are variable, but 6k is the minimum.We have about 60k in retirement savings so far between 2 IRAs and 2 401ks. Weve set aside 10k in an emergency fund which is almost 6 months worth of billsfood for us. We know this will need to increase once we have a house. We have up to 25k saved for a down payment. I say up to because in our spreadsheet, 21k is actually labeled for the down payment. The remaining 4k is slotted for fees, paint, etc. We hope to get this up to 40k by May of next year. Our only recurring debt is 500month for a car payment. We paid off our student loans earlier this year. Were currently renting for 750month and simultaneously setting aside at least 2,000 for the down payment, or building our emergency fund, etc. So once we own a place, we think its reasonable to assume that we could continue paying up to 2750 with zero changes or less if we wanted to go easy. Websites have been telling me that even with our low down payment we can afford a 400k house. Is this unreasonable? There are a good number of nice 4 bedroom houses in our area would give us room to grow for our future childrens entire lives in the 275-325k range. I wont lie and say that the 400k houses are certainly prettier, but I dont know if I should even allow myself to look at them.We have no plans to leave this area for the next 18 years, ha.  <response>: What you can afford is not a recommendation. Its just saying this is your max. Anywhere below that is good and the lower the better. 