The amount you can qualify depends on a few things, but think of it from the banks' perspective.  If you were going to lend the money, you'd want to know:  1) how much the house is worth, 2) how secure the borrower's income is, 3) how well has the borrower handled repaying their loans in the past, and 4) how much of their current income is tied up in paying off other loans.

The bank will do an appraisal on a house before they will issue a mortgage on it.  Basically, they need to know that if the borrower stops paying, they can sell the house for fair market price and still get their money back.

They will also pull a report from the credit bureaus, which can tell them about your employment and loan history.  The bank will know what your 'debt-to-income' ratio is...how much debt you currently have (from credit cards to car loans, student loans,etc.), and how much income you have.  Yes, the credit bureaus can report on all this, because they collect that information regularly from pretty much any organization that loans money...even utility companies that give you service before you pay them report your payments (ontime vs. late) to the credit bureaus.

There are two ways to find out how much mortgage you can get: pre-qualify, or wait until you have a property in mind.  To pre-qualify, you visit a mortgage broker or your local banker and they will ask you some questions and be able to approximate how much you will possibly be able to get.   However, that is all pending the actual appraised value of the property you intend to buy.

Without visiting a mortgage issuer, the only other way to answer the question, "How much mortgage can I get" is to use the calculator built into some of the online banks' websites.  Of course, if you lie to the calculator (for example, by inflating your income amount), the number will be worthless, because when the real report is pulled, they will know for sure.

Linda - http://how.best-free-information.com - The "How" Blog

Readers see the official-looking message, are worried by the message, and immediately click on the link to take action, like dispute false charges on a credit card, or try to get an account re-opened that has been temporarily closed. Keep in mind that there really are no false credit charges, or the account has not been closed. But readers are worried, so they click to fix the situation.

They will be taken to a very official-looking site…one that looks exactly like the real site of the business the scammers are copying. For example, if the scammer claims that your PayPal account has been temporarily suspended and that you need to 'click here' to login and correct the situation, the screen to which you will be taken will look just like the official PayPal site. There, the reader 'logs in', by entering their login and password onto the screen. Once that information is sent, the scammer then has captured the reader's login and password. (The form was not really a login form, but a form to store the login and password into the scammer's database for use later.)

So, how can you avoid these clever phishing scams?

It is simple.

Never, never, NEVER click on a link from an email.

Let's assume that you received an email that looks like it is from your specific credit card company, stating that some fraudulent charges have been detected and they need you to 'confirm' that the charges are not yours. DO NOT CLICK from the email!!

If you are really worried about the contents of the message, why not just call the Customer Service number on the back of your card? Or login directly (NOT through clicking a link) to the site. All of the financial institutions, or places like PayPal and eBay, have internal messaging systems. If they want you to receive an important message, they send it to that mailbox, too.

Protect yourself from phishing scams…never, ever, click on a link from within an email message to respond to a business message.

Linda - http://how.best-free-information.com - The "How" Blog