hi

how much combined income would it take to comfortably afford a 2BR condo in the suburbs? above 8k?

Hi Synapse,

You can do a financial check on your affordability of the condo. Take home pay less current liabilities (eg. parents' support, personal expenses, utilities, car loan, etc..). How much are you left with? You may want to consider having a baby sometime in the future and provide for contingency expenses.

Also check on how much CPF you can use to service the loan and whether you need to top up using cash.

Another important point is whether your job is secure and how long is your loan tenure. If your loan tenure is very long eg. 20 years or more, it is hard to predict whether we will still have a job to pay for these expenses.

Cheers.

In addition to above factors, do also consider which stage of career you are in.

If career in early stage with good salary prospects over long term, then 8K shd be ok. Risks are always there but the relative youth with few liabilities is a huge advantage.

If more towards mid-career with not much more leeway for salary to go north, it becomes harder to justify unless you have already squirrelled a pile of cash as safety net.

I doubt anyone wld be asking this question as a near-retiree.

At today's property prices, say suburban condo ard $800K-1mil, the typical monthly mortgage can hit 3-4K.

Valid point, I'm 46. That was part of reasons I sold the 99-yr condo unit and moved to resale hdb 5 rm, though condo has been fully paid.