Can I afford to buy a home given my current income levels? How do I calculate Home Affordability?

Author: Sachin Gupta | Find me on Twitter Follow @sach_gupta
 

This piece of blog is meant to illustrate if the home you are buying is affordable or not, given your current income levels.

For many of us working in IT/ITES; Auto; Manufacturing; other services sector, buying a home is a long-term financial commitment. On one hand, we have the aspirations of owning a home while on other hand we have the obligation to fulfill that aspiration. This is where a quick home affordability analysis would help us a great deal given our current financial situation.

Step 1:
Assess your current household income (include your spouse salary to it)
Household Income = your current take home salary + your spouse take home salary + other sources of income

Step 2:
According to global standards, one should allot maximum of 40- 50% of household income for home loan EMIs.
As an example, if your net household income is 1 Lac rupees, allot maximum of 50000 rupees for paying EMIs.

Step 3:
Most banks offer floating home loan rates, Therefore, we will only consider floating home loan rates here.
Analyze current home loan rates (It would help if you have the data for last 5 year home loan rates, because interest rates tend to move up & down in cycles)
As an example, let’s assume home loan rates are @ 10.5% and tenure of the loan is 240 months.

Step 4:
Calculate the home affordability ratio which is
Value of home /your net household yearly income
In this example, the net household income=1200000
Value of home=6260142
HAR (Home Affordability Ratio) = 6260142/1200000, that comes out to be 5.21.

As a thumb of rule, the home affordability ratio should fall between 4.9 and 5.4 for the home to be considered affordable.

Therefore, before proceeding to buy your home, doing simple maths would go a long way in assessing the value of home that you can afford.

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