How much can I borrow?

The number that matters is not your salary

It is your net income after deductions, less every existing commitment a credit bureau can see: other loans, store cards, a car, the credit card limit whether or not you use it. What survives that is what the instalment has to fit inside, and most lenders will not let a home loan instalment take much more than about a third of gross income.

Then they stress it. A bank granting at one rate will commonly test whether you still cope at two or three percentage points higher, because it is lending you money for twenty years and the repo rate will not sit still for that long.

The three things that move it most

• A credit card limit you never use. Many lenders treat the limit, not the balance, as a commitment. Closing or reducing a facility you do not need can move your affordability by more than a raise would.
• Short-term debt. A R4 000 instalment on a car with eighteen months left crushes what you can borrow for twenty years. Clearing it first is sometimes worth more than the deposit you were saving.
• How your income is evidenced. Commission, overtime and a thirteenth cheque are often averaged or discounted. Six months of payslips rather than three can change what a lender is willing to count.

A worked example

That is a R330 000 swing from one car. It is also why the honest answer to "how much can I get" is always a conversation about what else you owe.

Why two banks give different answers

Because the policy is theirs. How much of gross income they will allow, what they stress at, how they treat commission, whether they count a credit card limit or its balance — all of that is each bank's own and none of it is published. Two banks reading identical payslips routinely land several hundred thousand rand apart.

Which is the practical argument for one application going to several of them rather than you picking one and hoping.