How Much Home Loan Can I Get on My Salary?

You walk into a bank dreaming of a ₹70 lakh flat, and the loan officer asks one question that quietly decides everything: what do you take home each month? Not your CTC, not your gross — your net, in-hand salary. From that single number, the lender works backwards to a loan amount, and it is often smaller than you’d hoped.

The good news: you can run the same arithmetic yourself, before you ever fill in an application. Once you understand the rule lenders use, your eligibility stops being a mystery and becomes a number you can plan around.

The rule lenders actually use: FOIR

Banks don’t lend against your salary directly. They lend against the slice of your salary that’s still free after your existing commitments. The tool they use is the FOIR — the Fixed Obligation to Income Ratio.

In plain terms, a lender will allow your total monthly EMIs (the new home loan plus any car loan, personal loan, or credit-card EMIs you already pay) to reach only about 50–60% of your net monthly income. The exact cap varies by lender, your profile, and the loan size — so always confirm the figure with your lender — but 50% is a sensible, conservative anchor for planning.

That leftover slice is your affordable EMI. And your affordable EMI, combined with the interest rate and tenure, is what determines the loan amount.

Why existing EMIs hurt so much

Here’s the part people underestimate. If you already pay a ₹15,000 car-loan EMI, that ₹15,000 comes straight off the top of your FOIR budget. On a ₹1,00,000 income with a 50% cap, your total EMI room is ₹50,000 — but the car loan eats ₹15,000, leaving only ₹35,000 for the home loan. Less room means a smaller eligible loan. Clearing a small loan before you apply can genuinely raise the house you qualify for.

Working backwards: from EMI to loan amount

Let’s reverse the usual direction. Instead of “here’s my loan, what’s my EMI?”, we ask “here’s my affordable EMI, how big a loan does it support?”

Take a clean case: net income ₹1,00,000/month, no other EMIs, 50% FOIR. That gives an affordable EMI of ₹50,000. At an interest rate of 8.5% over 20 years (240 months), that ₹50,000 EMI supports a home loan of about ₹57,61,542.

That’s the headline number. Now watch how the levers move it.

The tenure lever

Stretch the same ₹50,000 EMI over 30 years (360 months) instead of 20, and the supportable loan jumps to about ₹65,02,682 — roughly ₹7.4 lakh more eligibility, for the identical monthly outgo.

It’s tempting to grab the bigger number. But a longer tenure means you pay interest for ten extra years, and the total interest balloons even though the monthly EMI hasn’t changed. A longer tenure raises how much you can borrow; it does not make the loan cheaper. We break this trade-off down in how loan tenure affects your EMI and in the deep dive on the real cost of a longer tenure.

The income lever

Eligibility scales with the slice of income you can commit. A couple of worked points, all at a 50% FOIR with no other EMIs:

Net monthly income	Affordable EMI (50%)	Rate	Tenure	Eligible loan (approx.)
₹1,00,000	₹50,000	8.5%	20 years	₹57,61,542
₹1,00,000	₹50,000	8.5%	30 years	₹65,02,682
₹75,000	₹37,500	8.5%	20 years	₹43,21,156
₹50,000	₹25,000	9.0%	20 years	₹27,78,624

Two things jump out. First, eligibility roughly tracks income — a ₹75,000 earner on the same terms qualifies for about ₹43 lakh against the ₹1,00,000 earner’s ₹57.6 lakh. Second, the rate matters too: the ₹50,000-income row uses a 9% rate, and a higher rate shrinks the loan a given EMI can support, because more of each EMI goes to interest rather than principal. See how interest rate affects your EMI for why even a small rate gap moves the needle.

A worked example, start to finish

Meet Priya. Net in-hand: ₹1,00,000/month. She has no car loan, no personal loan, no card EMIs. She’s eyeing a 20-year home loan at 8.5%.

1. FOIR budget: 50% of ₹1,00,000 = ₹50,000 total EMI room.
2. Existing EMIs: none, so the full ₹50,000 is available for the home loan.
3. Affordable EMI → loan: at 8.5% over 240 months, ₹50,000/month supports about ₹57,61,542.

So Priya’s home loan eligibility is roughly ₹57.6 lakh. But that is not the price of the flat she can buy.

Don’t forget the down payment — it sits on top

Lenders in India typically finance a portion of the property value and expect you to fund the rest as a down payment from your own savings. That down payment is on top of the loan, not inside it.

So if Priya’s loan eligibility is ₹57.6 lakh and she has, say, ₹12 lakh saved for a down payment, her realistic property budget is the loan plus the down payment — not the loan alone. The bigger your down payment, the larger the home you can target without needing a bigger loan (or a longer, costlier tenure). It also means you borrow less, so your total interest is lower from day one.

Levers you control before you apply

• Clear small, high-EMI loans first. Every existing EMI you retire frees up FOIR room and can lift your eligible amount.
• Bring a bigger down payment. It expands your property budget without inflating the loan.
• Be cautious with tenure. A 30-year loan boosts eligibility on paper, but you’ll pay interest for a decade longer. If you stretch the tenure to qualify, plan to prepay aggressively later.
• Mind the rate. A lower rate stretches the same EMI into a bigger loan. Shopping the rate — and your credit profile — is worth real money.

The takeaway

Your home loan eligibility isn’t a black box. It’s mostly one calculation: net income → FOIR cap → affordable EMI (after existing EMIs) → loan amount. A ₹1,00,000 earner with no other EMIs lands near ₹57.6 lakh at 8.5% over 20 years; stretch to 30 years and it’s about ₹65 lakh, but the interest bill grows with it.

Before you fall for a flat, run your own numbers in the home loan calculator and the general EMI calculator, then add your down payment on top to get a property budget you can actually defend. All figures here are illustrative estimates — your real eligibility depends on your lender’s FOIR policy, your credit profile, and the rate you’re offered, so confirm the specifics with your lender.