I’m deep in the planning stages of building a new house for my family. Right now, though, I’m trying to come to terms with the sticker shock and compare what others are paying for their housing.
Currently, I’m paying cheap rent at about 20% of my take-home. However, the monthly payments on the new house are likely to be about 40% of my net monthly earnings. Clearly, I’ve got some lifestyle adjusting to do.
What are you paying for housing, as a percentage of your net take-home pay?
The rent alone is about 8%; with all the bills it’s about 12.5%. But I live in a very cheap apartment.
My rent alone comes out to 19%. Add in the bills and it hits near 29%, but that includes groceries.
Including utilities, taxes, and insurance we’re running at 15%.
And it’s a pretty nice house in a very good neighboorhood
After refinancing, somewhere between 33% (after IRS mortgage deduction) and 40% (not including deduction but including escrow for insurance and taxes). But then, I live in the Boston area which has stupidly expensive housing and it’s not even that great a house.
As a single guy earning a decent salary, it doesn’t bother me, although I’m not exactly out every weekend splurging on iPods. If I were trying to sock away some money for the kids’ education and braces, things would be tighter.
I spend about 23% of my net pay on housing. That includes mortgage and insurance.
Ed
:eek: I just got out my calculator. I’m spending 33 percent of my net pay on my rent. It’ll be 34 percent when my new lease starts in September.
My house payment including taxes and insurance is about 27% of my take home, not including utilities and other such “extras”. Things have been a little tight lately.
Wow. I pay a whopping 44% of my net for rent, plus heat. I do believe I need a different job.
I’m spending (ouch) 62.3% of my monthly income on rent, being as I am a graduate student in Boston with a strong desire to live alone. Obviously, I’m scraping by somehow, however.
I am currently making $50 more a month than I pay in rent. When my husband starts his new job we’ll be paying about 45% of our combined income for rent. Rent is sort of expensive here, and my job doesn’t pay very well.
We spend 25% of our combined take home pay on our mortgage and insurance,
Just did the math…
Just taking the mortgage we’re looking at it being about 8.7% of our monthly (with a caveat) income.
Add in the revolving line of credit that pays for home repairs (so far all new wiring and HVAC) and it comes to 11.5%
Caveat: We both get paid every two weeks and I just multiplied one check times two for both of us.
Also, we live in A) an extremely cheap place to live and B) bought a fixer-upper.
I’m at about 23-24%, and that’s gone down in the last month, while my salary has gone up. I’m amazed I made it before!
Just by rent about 19%
Including gas, hydro and phone a little over 23%. (Cable’s a luxury, I admit that. 
)
Interesting looking at all the other replies. :]
Around 15% of our yearly take home pay.
Big buts:
We built our house when we had a much smaller income.
We’ve refinanced once to get lower payments
We pay significantly more than that, in the hope that in two years it will be a little over 0% (we will still have taxes and insurance)
When we moved in it was more like 38%.
Just under 40% for rent. (heat is included)
My husband is self employed, so I’m basing this off of my income, and my income alone (his fluctuates so much, it’s impossible for me to factor it in.)
My rent is (almost to the dollar) 1/2 of my take home pay each month. Except for July and December (I get paid every other week so those months, I get an “extra check” that doesn’t go towards rent.)
I’m in a similar boat… get paid every two weeks so there are some months with three paydays, but all of my expenses are monthly.
I factored that in… multiplied my take-home paycheck value by 26 and divided by twelve to get the averaged monthly net. 
27.3% for rent (including heating…when it wants to work).
Living in NYC ain’t cheap!