It’s the old question of balancing your needs and your wants when you’re thinking about buying a first home. One of the biggest decisions you need to make centers around the finances. In short you need to sit down and carefully work through a few key indicators.
Here’s a few tips to help you decide if you’re ready before you approach a Toronto mortgage broker.
Calculate your monthly debt payments. You need to know how far you are in debt by sitting down and adding up all the payments you make. Don’t forget to add credit cards, student loans and personal loans and lines of credit.
Total monthly expenses. Here you need to add up your household expenses and your debt payments. This should give you a good starting point to decide whether you need to trim from one end of the budget or the other before you start looking at Toronto mortgage rates, or whether you’re good to go.
There are some other affordability rules you should follow. You should never exceed certain limits when you’re planning on buying that first home and one of the cardinal rules is that monthly home costs should never go higher than 32% of your gross monthly income. Remember that in the end, the kind of house that you can afford depends on these factors and the size of the down payment you’re willing to make as well as the interest rates.
Of course, that’s where getting a good Toronto mortgage broker takes a weight off your shoulders. We’re here to help you get the rates and terms that suit your budget and lifestyle. It’s good to know that when you hire us we’ll be working for you and not the big financial institutions.
