How did you determine how much to spend on house?

[eskercurve]

There's the usual rules of thumb: no more than 25% of your pretax earnings or 38% of post-tax take-home pay (after 401k / IRA investments), whichever is less.

Or you can do the brute force approach. Take your current expenses and end-of-month surplus and calculate how much of that you're willing to spend on a house. Don't forget that your total at the end of the day is bills (which will likely be higher due to having a larger space), home maintenance (which will always be more since well, you were renting before), insurance (which will be higher), PITI (which may be more or not). Also consider whether you will change your lifestyle by moving into a house.

Also, consider the reasons for buying a house. Do you want to build equity? Do you want a future income stream by using the house then renting it out? Do you want space to use for children (down the road, consider your 40s to be the absolute max when children are appropriate, you don't want to be 60 and have kids in college).

Your income and debt levels are outstanding. You should consider buying a house in the 300s I would say, in a nicer area than a house in the 150k range, and pay it off in 15 years or so. Then, rent it out and you will have a nice source of income that can go up with inflation while you have the ability to downsize/upsize as you see fit and fits your life.