The thing is, as I always say in these type of threads, if you are in any way partly serious about looking at 'affordability' then there are way too many variables at play. 'Net' is only part of the puzzle - some people might have a very high proportion of net pay going on their mortgage, but have no other debts, short mortgage term, and loads of cash in the bank. This 50% 'thick line' could be no problem whatsoever for some people even not on high incomes, as they may not be that reliant on their monthly income. For some people even paying over 100% of net on mortgage could be affordable, although I accept this is unlikely to be common for FTB. Whereas somehow else could have lower proportion of net pay but loads of other debts, nothing in the banks, and decades left on their mortgage. Leaving that to one side, proportion of pay is all relative, people on big salaries could pay high proportion and still have thousands in disposable income every month.
I know it's just a bit of fun, so i'll play. TBH I can't remember exactly what my partner's gross (never mind net) income was when we bought our first house but roughly speaking, based on us splitting it 50:50 I was paying about 40% of net and she was paying about 30%. I do think this is potentially misleading though because we deliberately took a shorter mortgage term than many FTB (20 years) - if we'd taken a longer term, the proportions would drop, but that wouldn't make the home more affordable, we'd have ended up paying more in interest. Everyone seems obsessed with monthly payments these days, I'm more concerned minimising cost.
We took out a 23 year mortgage when I was 33 (wife was 29) but we are not in our forever home so there may be more to borrow yet. We also overpay but only for the last 9 months, which knocks us up to 33% of our net earnings going on the mortgage.To us, right now up to 40-45% seems doable but possibly unwise. We pay 22% of our net take-home on rent and that's very comfortable.
