Wedding Etiquette Forum

Poll: rent vs. income

What percentage of your income is your rent or house payment? Do you think you're paying too much, too little, or just enough for where you're located?

Re: Poll: rent vs. income

  • I have a line of credit on my house instead of a mortgage payment so my monthly payment = whatever money isn't spent elsewhere so I can pay this off faster.I'm also probably a bad example, but I think what my mortgage payment would be on this mortgage is significantly lower than most people pay in my area.

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  • I suck at math and am too lazy to figure out the percentage, but we bring in about 3k a month after savings/401k and pay $575 a month. It's pretty low considering we're in a university town. Average rent here is about 900-1200 for a one bedroom.
  • Our rent is about 20% of our monthly income. Yes the payment is a ridiculous number but that is what you get for being 40 min out of NYC. Anywhere in Boston/NYC is horrifically high.
  • My personal income is less than what we pay for house payments (well, what I take home after benefits, retirement, taxes, etc.)Our income as a couple, it's about a quarter of what we make a month gross. No clue net. FI handles our money. But it's just right for us right now - we have a ton of land and a big house for a couple just starting out. We're happy.
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  • Lets see...if I calculated right (and I probably didn't) our rent is roughly 30% of our combined monthly paychecks. For our area we're about normal, but it's still way to much money for an ok conditioned 1 bedroom apt with a den ($1400/month).
  • I think we pay about 20% of our take home.. It will drop to about 15% in April once the assessment is over. (that included mortgage, condo fee and assessment.)






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  • Our rent is 10% of our combined income.. so I feel that's pretty good. And for the part of town in which it's located, it's a fair price for what we have, too.
  • Our rent is about 20% of our income.  We pay about average for a 1 bedroom in the area.
  • Our rent is about 40% of our combined take home pay.  I think it's a bit high, but it's a HCOL area.  What can you do?  We have one of the lower rents in our area, so I guess it's good for the area.
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  • our mortgage is about 40% of our take home pay.  rent was about the same.  we're in metro boston tho where housing is ridiculous.
  • My mortgage payment is 21% of my take home pay. I think that's fairly normal for this area (small town).
  • We will pay our first mortgage payment this week, and it's about 18% of our take-home pay. Our rent was about 11%. So 18% for 3 bedrooms, two baths, and a yard is much better than 11% for one bedroom, one bath, second story.
  • Ok, that makes me feel better. I'm looking at renting a place that's 35% of my take-home income. Didn't factor in FIs income at all, so I think we're doing alright.
  • I forgot to mention that I didn't consider FI's income. When we marry and I finally move to his townhome next year, his mortgage will be 11% of our combined incomes. We actually plan to spend one salary and save one so that we can build our dream mod house one day in the near future and pay at least 1/2 down.
  • Bec, that's awesome. I like that idea!
  • 25%

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  • Our rent is about 10% of FI's take home a month.  But we're saving for a house.

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  • FI and I both purchased condos at bad times (him in san diego, me in DC).  My condo's about 1/3 of my income, so it has been great having FI move in (if a bit cozy:) FI's condo was less of his income...maybe 15%?  He's still losing some money on it (about $400 a month), which is the difference between what it's renting for and what he owes on it.
  • Our rent is 14% of our take home pay. I've lived in my apartment for 7 years and the rent has never been raised, but since it's in the city there are questionable pockets all around us. It's still a steal for how nice our place is.
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  • scratch my earlier response.  its more like 25%.  i had to pull out my math for dummies to figure out how to calculate the percentage.
  • not sure on percentage but we ended up getting our mortgage almost $200 less than the rent we had in our old place - that was smaller as well
  • Mortgage & condo fee on our townhouse is ~ 19% of our income. I think our mortgage is low for the area just bc its a townhouse - we couldn't own any kind of a house for that in DC
  • Our rent is about 30% of our salary.
  • Not too sure what percentage ours is. We have a take home pay of $4k a month and our mortage is $1300 a month. Pretty decent for the area and what we have. It will roughly be the same once we are in the new place, which is awesome. Brand new house that we picked out and are building from scratch for the same price as our duplex. Yay for a dip in the market!
  • Our mortgage and HELOC total about 26% of our gross pay.  But I am paying $1200 over on my HELOC to pay it off more quickly.Our mortgage/HELOC are 64% of our total monthly expenses.We are probably paying what most of the other folks are paying for units our size with out upgrades. 
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  • Oh...I just saw that someone posted their HOA.  Ours is $543/month (ugh!).  So with that, then our mortgage, HELOC and HOA are about 29% of our gross income.I think our rent was about 13% when we were renting back in '07.
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    I don't get married often, but when I do, I do it in Las Vegas.

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    "Lvharpy could be your AE." - direy25
    "smokeybailey is the one shining beacon of light in this steaming turd of a thread." - daffodil_jill
    "The almighty smokeybailey has spoken." - some bitch on the Las Vegas board

  • We're both living at home right now. I graduated a year ago and am working on my Masters. He's in an internship and graduates in August. We'll be getting an apt. in a couple of weeks and plan to pay between $500-750 for a nice 1 bed apt. or a small 2bd. house/duplex w/garage. We'd prefer the house/duplex, but nothings been available under $1300 for quite some time now. Housing market drops, renting market sky rockets! All the houses are nearing foreclosure and everyone is renting. Too bad we dont have job history we could just buy one and have a mortgage payment for less than rent!
  • 13% but we're renting, and its pretty inexpensive.
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  • Our morgage payment is 13% of our take home pay. FI bought this place before he was ready for us to get married so it's a duplex and kinda small. Hopefully we will be upgrading next year.
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