So if you earn 100k/year your max mortgage payment should be $2,300?
Yes, that's a good ballpark for what your mortgage payment should be. 36-43% total debt-to-income is another good benchmark, so add your car payments, any credit car debt payments, any student loan payments, etc to your mortgage payment and make sure it's not more than 43%, or $3583 for your example $100k salary. 36% ($3000) if you wanna stay conservative. And add in the property tax and homeowner's insurance if you wanna be more conservative.
Also remember that your mortgage is just the amount financed, not the purchase price. So if you put 20% down, it's 80% of the purchase price.
I wouldn't buy a house without fully evaluating all my incomes and expenses and seeing how much house I can afford factoring in property taxes, homeowner's insurance, and the tax savings of the property tax and mortgage interest. But the above ratios will give you a pretty good idea of what you can afford for basic search parameters. I'm pretty risk-averse so I'd also give myself a lot of margin. On the other hand I just blew the budget on a massive renovation by a ridiculous amount while adding 2 new dependents that will need child care and my wife just had her salary cut 10% (Covid struggles) and now is on unpaid leave for 1/3 of a year. I'm a bit out of my comfort zone ![:)](https://forum.baltimoresportsandlife.com/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.png)