is there a rule of thumb for housing costs for frum families? Like, in general people are advised to not spend more than 30%of their gross income on housing, which is really helpful for establishing a purchase price budget. But that's not accounting for the expenses of frum life. So what would you say that percentage is for us?

Curious what others think. My personal opinion is that any of these general rules, frum or not frum, are wildly inaccurate and should be avoided. Silly things like “rent should be one weeks salary” are so reductive that they create more harm than the simplicity provides benefit for.

Without addressing frum life specifically, the 30% rule falls apart in certain areas (such as Brooklyn), where its often upwards of 50% and there's all this talk about housing affordability. So it's not etched in stone. I think it's still what lenders want to see.

Lenders look at DTI yes, but you do not want to make your primary residence hitting the maximum DTI that a lender will allow for… Its the maximum for a reason.,.

Right. So if I'm trying to figure out how much home i can responsibly afford, I should be looking for the payments to be what percent of my gross income? (Then the question will be, do any houses actually sell for that low, but first things first)

My answer here is the good ol Monte Carlo 🙂 I don’t see how any “rule of thumb” would account for all the complexities of your life well enough to give you a good answer.

well it's a starting point, not a final budget determination. It to know what range to be looking in

I can tell you that in the maryland families I see, it would definitely be less than 30%

Guy makes $100M/year. He'll be fine going over $30M on his mansions. Just sayin' 🤪

Yeah especially when even if you remove the outliers/anomolies, the income range that I am seeing amongst families in the same communities can differ easily by 10x, it makes these general rules pretty silly.

I think the rules of thumbs usually seem (to me) to be a way to get people not go completely crazy on their purchases, rather than to be an optimized solution.

One idea would be to deduct the extra frum costs from your income before doing the 30% calculation. Things like tuition, yom tov, etc.