How much house can I afford based on my salary?

Use a home affordability calculator to calculate how much house you can afford. By taking your total annual income and weighing it against your annual payments from existing debt, you can gauge the size of a mortgage you can take on to get you to a 36 percent debt-to-income ratio. Depending on how much you have saved for a down payment, the amount of house you can afford increases because more money upfront means a smaller mortgage.