{"id":24,"date":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/2026\/09\/18\/how-much-house-can-you-afford\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","slug":"how-much-house-can-you-afford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/2026\/09\/18\/how-much-house-can-you-afford\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much House Can You Afford?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The price a lender will approve and the price you will be comfortable paying every month are rarely the same number. Start with the second one.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Start With the Monthly Payment<\/h2>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your monthly payment is more than principal and interest. Property tax and insurance sit on top of it, and so does mortgage insurance if you put down less than 20%. Our payment calculator adds all four, so try a few prices and see where the total lands.<\/p>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Lenders Measure<\/h2>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Your debt-to-income ratio, usually 43% or lower including the new payment<\/li>\n\n\n<li>Your credit score, which sets the rate as much as the approval<\/li>\n\n\n<li>The cash you have for the down payment, closing costs and reserves<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A pre-qualification call with a loan officer turns these three into a price range in about three minutes, with no credit check.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lenders look at two numbers before your price range: what you earn and what you already owe. Here is how to work out a budget you will be comfortable with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buying-a-home","tag-budgeting","tag-down-payment","tag-first-time-buyers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.canvaswp.com\/mortgage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}