I just put my flat mortgage payment + HOA. I don't escrow personally, nor would I ever actually in the current market (where escrow vs. not was no penalty for every lender I talked to and that was a bunch).
I'm 99% confident lenders will impute things like taxes and what not, they do for gross income and besides the overwhelming majority of people are just going to list their monthly payment regardless.
Kinda overthinking it as someone said 
.
I think part of the reason that BBS has posed this question regarding property taxes is because he happens to live in New York state where property taxes are stratospherically out of control.
Some property tax bills in NY can equal 100% of the actual mortgage payment. In this case, based on percentages, reporting the property tax payment can be a significant portion of ones debt to income ratio obligations.
For the rest of us that pay a more conservative property tax rate, the difference is inconsequential.
BBS, I have a solution for you, move out of the state of NY! I'm in California, which is not exactly property tax or tax friendly in general. However, it's no where near the New York state level.
So many of my customers have literally sold there homes and moved to a more tax friendly state.
Just my 2 cents on the topic...
Banks have so much flexibility wheni t comes to limits vs. income not sure it's relevant.
NY and Cali have different laws, and Cali property taxes are so FUBAR anyway there's just going to be some blanket assumption based on where you live what you property tax is going to be and that will be used.
Like mentioned re: mortgage space, lenders know you pay taxes, they factor that in, and while I haven't seen most of the lenders' algortihms it's a reasonable bet that they do here... various state tax rates are well known.
NY taxes are certainly not cheap, I agree with that 100%. The cost of living living is through the roof and questions are often raised as to whether or not a move out of the state should be considered.
The more we discuss this topic, the more I find the whole rent/mortgage payment question irrelevant. As mentioned earlier, lenders can see what your monthly mortgage payment is from looking at your credit report... so asking what it is more or less is just a way of determining if you're the type of person to give a truthful answer. It's kind funny when you think about it. They are asking you a question to which they already know the answer, and they know that you know they know the answer
Rent I guess I understand as that can't be seen from looking at your credit report, but neither can any other non-installment loan expenses so if that's the case what's the point in just asking for one. I just feel a question such as this should be more of an all or nothing type of thing. Either don't ask it at all, or if you're going to ask it attempt to achieve as much useful data out of it as possible.
@Anonymous wrote:Perhaps monthly mortgage/rent payment isn't a very big factor that is considered by lenders. At least not big in terms of what you enter in manually when asked that question. I would think the "income" field carries far more weight.
More likely tied together.
Income - mandatory spend = consumer discretionary spend = potential profit!