How Big Is Your Mortgage?

I think ours would be 2.5 what DH earns in the hand?

Yeah we could suck it up! I was doing his accounts for Apr/May & our interest portion on our revolving credit mortgage was $100 more a fortnight & that is just the interest payment.

We are coming off fixed in Nov after being fixed for 5 years, hopefully the rates will stay low or about the same as what we had.

How many times your annual income is your mortgage?
Maybe 2.5 times DP pay (we did pay a bit for the deposit

If interest rates hit 15%, would you still be able to afford your mortgage?
Yes, but there would be some sacrifices

If the main earner of the family lost their job, how many months savings do you have to cover the mortgage etc?
Dont have much on savings at the mo but we would servive on my income but would to cut back on things like sky etc...

Ours will be 4 times DH's income. I know that is a lot, but it'll only be for another two years max, until I can start earning again, and we're happy to make sacrifices in the meantime if it means we get to live in a new, warm, family-friendly house.

I don't think the problem is that house prices are too high (although they have definitely gone a bit high, and will probably flatten out during the next few years), I think it's that wages are too low in NZ.

We could live a really good lifestyle with overseas trips etc, when we were living in NZ and DH was earning UK pounds (then our mortgage was 2.3 times his income), but his new NZ wage - for the same kinda job - is much smaller.

Like everything else, the housing market has become globalised - people overseas buying here and pushing prices up, bringing house prices into line with overseas prices ... but maybe when nearly every skilled person has left to work in Melbourne, London or Hong Kong, wages will rise too!

ETA: but no of course wages won't rise, unless NZ can make more money, by adding value to its commodity exports or by exporting more valuable stuff like technology...

Edited by anakk

Interesting reading!

Our remaining mortgage is 3 x DH's wage - I've just been made redundant.  We own a nice house built last year on a lifestyle block, and we own over 70% of it.  We only have average jobs, but both sold a house each during the 'boom' and I have saved like a little squirrel since I was 18. 

We could afford the mortgage if rates went to 15%.  Most of our mortgage is fixed at 5.75% and we only have a small floating portion. 

We don't have cash reserves, but we do have an emergency credit card and also have some livestock we could sell.  We don't have any other loans, HPs etc.  We also have income protection insurance for DH's job. 

Our mortgage is 5.3 times DH's salary !! We have just extended the house from 94m2 to 164m2 so it cost a bit! Although I do work a bit part time and we also get a bit from WFF so that helps.

If the interest rates went up to 15% we could not afford to pay the mortgage in our current situation. However I work part time for the company I worked for before I had the boys and I am 100% sure that if I wanted to go back full time I could. I would think that we could afford 15% then. And our combined income would take the mortgage down to 2.8 times (or less) our combined salaries

We have no savings as it was taken up with the extension. But as I said I could go back to work straight away and earn almost as much as DH if not the same depending on the role work gave me.

This is all quite interesting (and scary!) to think about

It is really interesting, but remember that most people are at different stages in their lives, for example, I'm only 24 and have only had a mortgage for 3 years so we haven't paid off as much equity say, as someone who has been in the property market for 10 years, got lucky in the boom and was on 2 incomes before having kids.

So don't freak out if you're in the higher ratio bracket, we all end up with the same at the end of the day (house, kids).