[itronitron]

3.5x your gross yearly pay sounds fairly typical. You should really only care about your monthly mortgage payments. If you have student loan debt then you should try to roll that into your mortgage if it has a much lower rate.

[dalyons]

Not typical everywhere... The median wage / house price in sydney & melbourne are 13x and 10x respectively. And you pretty much have to live in one of those two cities if you want a decent job in Australia. The country’s in for a lot of pain if there’s a big recession.

[acjohnson55]

Through the new school student loan consolidation firms, you may be able to get better interest rate on your student loan debt than your mortgage. This was the case for me. I used Common Bond.