[MJB]

Say if you had a joint income of $60K-$80K what type of mortgage could you comfortably live with? Just a general question as I know everyone lives to different means. Currently in the UK with a joint income of £60K and a mortgage of £125K we are pretty comfortable, we have no kids just one expensive cat! We'd look at renting initially to suss out area's etc... but it seems to me if you're forking out $350 per week for a rental thats approximately $18K per year. What mortgage are you looking at for the same figure? Do people over there stretch themselves with BIG mortgages like many over here? We consciously didnt want to here because we wanted to enjoy other things in our lives (holidays etc..). But I fear we may have to do so in NZ.

Cheers,

Mike.

[eric_amanda]

We fall into the middle of your bracket. We are selling our UK property and so intend to reduce our mortgage to between $200 - $250k. This should make things nice and comfortable for us, however we do have 3 young children.

Not sure how all kiwi's manage to buy houses, when they earn so little and by comparison houses are quite expensive??

Amanda

[Moorf]

We are paying $350 a week for a house in Sumner. We are looking to buy a house and have a mortgage of c. $250k which is approximately the same as paying $350/wk rent.

[Glenn]

Most banks work on payments of 1/3 income less debts.
e.g.

Household income $80,000
Payments up to $1065 per fortnight
Able to borrow $330,000

Check out www.westpac.co.nz
or www.asbbank.co.nz

for mortgage rates and calculators

regards

Glenn