One of the questions I always have when this question pops up is have you done analysis of what the income vs cost of living is vs other places? If 400k is your floor and you make $128 combined that doesn't sound like a place you probably can afford living in. I personally dont think you make enough money to make it work.

When we first got here we thought we needed a 350k home to be happy (this was nearly 3 years ago so thats like a Florida McMansion) and we didn't get approved for it so we had to reduce our search to 250k houses. We found one and it was just as good as a 350k (at the time and in our opinion).

Have you opened up an app like Trulia and zoomed out and looked at houses that are more affordable and see if you can have a slightly longer work transit time to save a crap ton of money?

I wish you luck