I remember the 1st house in the Wairarapa that my late husband and I bought (built) back in the early 70's. The bank (BNZ) wouldn't lend so that we could buy an existing home, and you could only get a "State Advances" loan if you built a new house. An uncle who was a builder did us a good deal so off we went on our journey of discovery to build our first home.
We learnt that when calculating our ability to repay the mortgage, State Advances wouldn't take my earnings from a full time job into consideration as I was a woman and women get pregnant and then give up work to raise their kids. It didn't matter that my savings alone paid for the section so it was only the cost of the house we had to find.
We managed to just scrape in and finally moved into our very modest little 3 b/room house. I thought at the time, wow, we made it and this is going to be our home for the next 25 years.
Wrong..... we sold it 4 years later and doubled our money. Then moved up to the Bay of Plenty...
Every time we went through this exercise, we struggled but always made reasonable profits after 3 or 4 years, and never once regretted that struggle to get a bit further ahead each time.
YOTT