How many years of income can I borrow?

That multiple is an outer ceiling, not a target, and in most files it is not the binding constraint. The debt burden ratio usually bites first: your total monthly repayments cannot exceed 50 percent of gross monthly income, and the mortgage is assessed inside that limit at a stress rate higher than the one you are offered.

So two applicants on identical salaries can be told very different numbers, because what counts as income is where banks differ most. Basic salary is simple. Commission, bonus, allowances and rental income are read differently across a panel of more than twenty lenders, and for an investment property at least two months of rental income must be deducted before the rest is counted.

This is the clearest example of why a calculator gives you a number rather than an answer. It has to assume one treatment of your income; a panel contains several. The gap between the most and least generous reading of a commission based salary is routinely larger than any rate difference on offer.

If a meaningful part of what you earn is not basic salary, the multiple is the least interesting number in your file, and the right question is which bank reads the rest of it properly.

Debt burden and the stress test: CBUAE Circular 31/2013 Article 3.1. Income treatment is panel practice.