<prompt> Human: My fiancée and I have begun looking at houses. We started with Zillows How much house can I afford? calculator. Entered our income 65,000, down payment we could do up to 40,000, and monthly debts fortunately 0, as we dont have any student loans, car payments, or credit card debt.I did a custom 30 year term with 3.5 rate, took out PMI, bumped homeowners insurance up to 1000 default is 800, but I wanted to be safe.Its returning 350,000!! Even if I put in 200mo debts in case we get a car in the next few years, its still well over 300,000.Is it honestly possible that we could get a 300,000 house? That buys a very nice house where we live. We were looking at closer to 175k.Maybe we can afford it, but we feel like at our age, we shouldnt be able to afford even a 225k house thats still a very nice house around here. I realize not having any debt helps tremendously, but its still hard to believe.Edit: the reason we started looking at this calculator was because we found a house for 215k that we both really like, but seems out of reach.  <response>: Based on my experience buying a house, I would recommend you consider the following:Buy a throwaway house first. Until youve lived in your own house for 3-5 years, there are tons of things that you dont know if youll like prefer or not. We went directly from apartment to dream home and while we wont need to sell any time soon, we are not walking distance to any stores, and the neighborhood isnt very lively. Both are things we didnt consider when first buying the house.New expenses: Mortgage. Taxes. Insurance. Annual AC inspections. Lawn Equipment. Lawn Services fertilizer, weed control. Pest control. Insurance Deductible Savings Acct. we needed to pay our deductible twice this year... once for our roof, once for a leaking water-heater line. Mulch. Alarm service.Even if you could snap your fingers and just pay it all with a one-time payment, you still have to factor in the TIME required to manage all that crap.--Robert 