Consider a good friend of mine. Household income: $80,000/year.
First house mortgage: $94,000.
Second mortgage on first house: $22,000.
Line of credit balance on first house: $13,000.

He goes to the bank and they give him $40,000 to buy a lot, then give him another $200,000 to build a new house. He finally sold the first house after making payments on all five of those loans for over a year. He's not out from under yet because his first house sold for $103,000 (yep, he'd borrowed $129,000 on a $103,000 house). Now he's just got a "reasonable" 3 year gross debt.