How much mortgage can I afford?Intuitively, we all know taking out a mortgage will be, for almost everyone, the largest investment a person or family will make.
Further, a home loan is frequently thought of as a good investment when it is used to finance the purchase of a house or building that has a reasonable chance to appreciate in value.
"But how do I know if I can afford a mortgage," is a common refrain.
Helping you answer this question is precisely the goal of this mortgage calculator. You'll quickly notice this calculator is capable of a great deal more than just calculating a monthly mortgage payment. Spend a few minutes with it, and it will help you understand the actual cost of any potential (or existing) home loan. More below...»
This home loan calculator does have a lot of options. Don't let the number of details put you off. Fortunately, if you only want to calculate a payment amount, you'll frequently have to enter only three values while leaving the other settings and inputs unchanged. The payment calculation is as easy as this:
That's it. Now you'll know the principal and interest payment required to pay off the debt.
But for sure, this debt payment does not begin to cover the full cost of having a home loan. There are few other expenses, of course! And this calculator is designed to consider them all.
VERY IMPORTANT - You must enter a 0 if you want a value calculated. Some users have been frustrated by this. They want to know why the calculator does not just recalculate if they have changed one of the inputs.
This behavior is by design. We want the calculator to create an amortization schedule using whatever parameters you want to use. This is a feature!
By not automatically recalculating a payment, this calculator lets those users who do not have a "standard" loan create a payment schedule.
ABOUT DATES - This calculator now allows irregular length first periods. That is, the calculator calculates the exact amount of interest due even when the initial period is shorter or longer than the other scheduled periods. This will result in payment amounts as well as interest charges that do not match other calculators. If you want to match other calculators then set the "Loan Date" and "1st Payment Date" so that the time between them equals one full period as set in "Payment Frequency". Example: If the "Loan Date" is May 15th and the "Payment Frequency" is "Monthly," then the "1st Payment Date" should be set to June 15th, that is IF you want a conventional interest calculation. See the end of the "Help" text for some more details.
Of course, you can always leave the dates set as they are when the calculator loads.
Calculate many unknowns including the projected future value of the home. Free #mortgage calculator 😎 https://t.co/c982mU39C6 #RealEstate Compare future value to interest paid. pic.twitter.com/Qb03462EL5
— Karl Thompson (@Calculators4You) January 10, 2018
You can use this calculator to answer such questions as:
Related - Need to know the exact balance of a mortgage? Then use this mortgage payoff calculator.
The printable mortgage schedule has recently been upgraded to add support for the following:
All the above are optional. That is, you may set them to 0.
Unlike our general loan or simple loan calculators, this calculator will allow you to have more than one unknown value in certain cases.
To indicate an unknown value, enter '0' (zero). There must be one unknown in each group — that is two unknowns are required.
You can enter the price of the real estate, the down payment percent you need, the total number of periods for which you want to borrow the money and the interest rate. When you click on "Calc", the loan amount and the monthly payment will be calculated.
If you enter the loan amount and "0" for the down payment percentage, then the down payment percentage (and down payment amount) will be calculated.
If you enter "0" for the price, a down payment percentage, "0" for the mortgage amount, the total periods, the interest rate and the payment you can afford, the calculator will calculate the loan amount and the price you can afford to pay. You can use this calculation to tell you what you can afford to pay and borrow and still stay within a budget.
Annual Property Taxes, Annual Insurance and Private Mortgage Ins. (PMI) are all optional. If you enter values, the periodic portion of each will be calculated and shown on the schedule. Property taxes and insurance are both included under escrow.
If a borrower does not have cash to cover at least 20% of the purchase price, some lenders will require the borrower to purchase private mortgage insurance to cover against a possible default. Premiums are typically 0.5% to 2.0% of the original loan amount. The borrower can drop the insurance coverage once the mortgage balance is less than 80% of the original purchase price. The calculator handles this automatically. (There may be other conditions as well under which the lender will no longer require the PMI. One such case might be apprciation of the real estate.)
Points are charges that are normally due at closing. It is an optional input. Borrowers (normally only in USA) may select to pay a lender "points" up front in exchange for a lower interest rate. Points are expressed in percent and are calculated on the amount borrowed. 3 points on a $200,000 mortgage equals $6,000. If the user enters points, this calculator includes their value in the summary and as part of the total payment at loan origination on the payment schedule.
Your columns are mixed up.
The interest and the principal columns are wrong which is causing numbers to be incorrect.
You’re referencing the print preview? The numbers aren’t wrong there. Using the default example, click on calc and then print preview. I see the following number for interest and principal for the first payment.
1,516.67 interest
922.43 principal
The loan amount is $280,000 @ 6.5% interest rate.
(6.5 / 100 / 12) * 280,000 = 1516.667
Also, check the last running total of the principal column, the total equals the loan amount i.e $280,000.
Or were you talking about something else?
How can I enter the payment dates in the payment schedule?
If you want to enter payments as they are made (to determine exact loan balance or to handle extra or missed payments) then you can use this loan payoff calculator . (This is a more flexible calculator but it will take time to learn. Please scroll to the bottom of the page for 25 tutorials.)
If you just want to specify the loan’s origination date and first payment date and have the other payments on a regular schedule then you can use this amortization table, which I see you have already found.
Why don’t the calculators auto-complete with the correct calculations once the required fills are filled in. It would lead to a much smoother user experience. Additionally, the errors that pop up when the calculator cannot calculate are vague, it would be helpful if they could pinpoint the exact source of error. Thank you!
Hi Rachel, so there are 2 questions / issues here. I’ll take the 2nd one first.
As to the messages being vague, that should be very easy for me to fix. The problem is, they are not vague to me! Can you copy / paste here and tell me what isn’t clear and I’ll reword an update. I guess you keep seeing the message because they aren’t clear. The basic point to remember is, a user never types anything except for a number or the decimal character. And a user should use backspace to delete.
As to the calculator auto calculating rather than clicking on the calculate button, that might be a future enhancement, but it’s tricky because many calculators can solve for multiple unknowns and there also does not need to be an unknown. Lets’s say a user wants to create a schedule with a specific payment amount which is not the normal payment amount and they want to have a term that results in a final larger balloon payment. Now they enter all their values and has they get to the payment amount, it has been calculated by the calculator because it previously had been 0. That means they have to clear out the just calculated value. That’s not ideal either.
Probably the best thing is to let the user type Alt-C to calculate?
Thanks for your comments and hope to hear what text you find not to be clear.
In using the calculator, it seems that changing the accrual basis from 365 to 360 does not affect the payment amount which is incorrect. Not sure if this had been brought up before. Thanks
Hi, what calculator are you using? This calculator does not give the user an option for selecting a 360/365 day year.
But, that aside, the 360/365 day option, where offered, only impacts calculations for “exact”, “daily” or “continuous” compounding OR when a period has odd days – say monthly frequency and dates go from Oct 7th to Nov. 1. Then you’ll see a difference due to 360/365 selection. The reason for this, if compounding is monthly and the period between the 2 dates is an even month, then the interest rate used is the nominal annual rate divided by 12 (not 360 or 365).
You can check this for yourself using the Ultimate Financial Calculator.
(Please do not reply to this email. If you have a follow-up, question, please post it on this site.)
I used the amortization calculator, although I accidentally added the comment under the mortgage calculator.
I saw the statement impacts calculations for “exact”, “daily” or “continuous” compounding (when clicking settings to change the accrual basis) and even when I changed the option to compounding to daily from monthly, I could not see a difference in the payment.
Terms are $100,000 at 5% for 60 months, note date 11/1/2016 with first payment 12/1/2016.
We are in need of a loan calculator to calculate loan payments both on a 365 OR 360 accrual basis.
Appreciate your help. Thank you!
I think I understand what’s happening. If you change between 360 or 365, you then need to go back and set the payment amount to 0, and recalculate it. The payment amount will not change on its own when the user changes the days per year option. Perhaps I need to think about making that change.
Taking your numbers, I get these results:
$1,887.51 for 365
$1,890.70 for 360 days.
Thanks for posting the follow-up.
Good morning- I went in and deleted the payment amount as you recommended and then calculated again but even like this I can’t get the payment amount to recalculate. I get a payment amount of $1887.12 for both 365 and 360. Any other suggestions? Thank you
This is perplexing. The calculator definitely will calculate different payment amounts based on 360/365 selection.
Please confirm that compounding frequency is set to either “Daily” or “Exact/Simple”.
Not really sure what you mean by “delete” the payment. Specifically, it has to be set to “0” (zero).
If you reopen the settings dialog window, is your selection saved in every case? Meaning, when you select 360 and then reopen, do you see 360 selected? And same for the 365 selection. This setting is stored in a “cookie” on your local computer. Perhaps cookies are disabled? If they are, then it would not work either.
Specifically what are all your inputes and what is the result of the calculated payment?
ok, I think I got it. I corrected compounding from Monthly to Daily and made sure to set the payment to zero before changing the accrual basis. Thank you so much for your help.
I have been looking for a calculator that told me the number of months it would take, and how much interest I would save, if I added money to every monthly mortgage payment.
Your calculator takes into account exactly what I was looking for and gave me a figure in seconds.
Brilliant!
Thank you,
Gail Hunt
Thank you Gail. I’m happy you found it useful. Please tell your friends and colleagues about this site.
How do I change the date of the loan and the date of the payments?
With this calculator, the user can’t change the dates. The purpose of this calculator is to make it easy for a user to check total costs and affordability while making as few entries as possible.
For being able to set dates, you have two choices.
1. If you want to set the loan date and 1st payment date and then assume all payments are made on a fixed schedule, use the Amortization Schedule.
2. If you want to record payments as they are made, that is, the payment dates vary, then use the Ultimate Financial Calculator.
For #2, check out the tutorials on the page. Scroll down and read #25 (after reading #1), as that deals with random loan payments and calculating loan balances.
Interest only payment calculator is not working for some strange reason
Are you saying this interest only calculator doesn’t work, or another calculator? If so, in what way? Can you give me an example? For me, it solves for either the payment amount or loan amount and it creates a payment schedule with 100% of the payment covering the interest and no principal. Thanks for your time.
Hi There,
I installed your plugin here http://emg2017.flywheelsites.com/resources/calculators/ using one of your example shortcodes but the calculator does not display properly.
There is no text next to the fields to show what should be entered in each field.
Any ideas as to why?
Thanks!
Hello, I took a look at the page. Did someone make custom modifications to the calculator? It not just that you can’t see the text, the layout is all messed up as well.
I took a look at the text issue. Here is the code for the first label:
<label class=”control-label” for=”edPrice”><span class=”text”><span class=”text-inner”>Real Estate Price?:</span></span></label>
I’m not sure if you know HTML, but see the class="text"? That’s not part of the calculator code. If your theme inserted those class definitions, then the theme is not compatible with this plugin.
There are a lot of other changes made to the calculator as well.
Any way to keep the theme from doing that?
That’s a question for the theme developer.
I’m am getting a loan of $144,000 at a 1.7% rate. I would like to know how much I need to pay monthly in order to pay if off with 8-10 years. How would I do this?
To calculate the payment amount for the 10-year loan, you can set the inputs this way:
To calculate the payment amount, the key is to set it to 0.
If a user already knows how much they want to borrow, then the price of the real estate and the down payment percentage can be set to 0 also.
Does this get you started?
I’m having trouble getting the payment schedule to see or print. Any ideas?
We can get it to see and print until we add the extra payments. Then it doesn’t work.
Sorry for the problem. I can’t debug this right at the moment, but if you have the mortgage amount, please try this calculator:
loan calculator.
It works in a similar way. Just plug your mortgage amount in and the other loan details.
It did the same thing. Once the additional payment was entered it wouldn’t let me see or print the schedule.
I’m trying to get a schedule for: $105,000 LA
$1000 payment
8% Interest
$25,000 additional payment on each anniversary
date
We hope to close on May 1, 2018
Hate to say it, but I’m not having an issue. That is, I enter extra payments (in the loan calculator) and I can see them in the print preview.
There is one thing, if you’ve been to this site before, you might have some older code remaining cached in your browser. You can try what’s called a "hard refresh".
On Windows computers, that usually done (in IE and Chrome anyway) by pressing Ctrl-F5.
Please give that a try.
How do I get payment information for total payment fixed, principal (calculated), (interest calculated at fixed rate) , escrow taxes fixed amount.
The "total payment" for the year includes the principal and interest paid and the "escrow amount" includes the total taxes paid. You would need to add these two numbers together to know the total of all these values.
I don’t see a place where this total would logically fit into the schedule, otherwise, I would include it.
Hi Karl, You must have an amazing mind to understand and program all of these calculators !!
I am about to owner finance a home sale to a friend. He has said that he wants to sometimes make extra payments and since his income is variable each month, these extra payments will vary. I have had my lawyer draw up all the necessary mortgage closing papers for us to sign and record. They created a mortgage schedule but it doesn’t take into consideration extra payment options.
I do not have a banking background and I know I will need a reliable way to re-calculate everything each time he makes extra payments. Which calculator would be best for me to use as we go along with him making regular monthly payments plus his erratic extra payments ?
He will be paying his own insurance and property taxes so I don’t need to worry to worry about escrow for those.
His loan amount will be $144,000 (after subtracting his down payments and rent credits I am allowing him) , the mortgage will be for 15 years, monthly payments.
I would really appreciate your advice on which of your calculators I can use to keep track of this and issue him an annual statement.
I love your favicon BTW !!
Lundy in Alabama
Hello Lundy in Alabama,
I’ve got just the calculator for you. Please see the Ultimate Financial Calculator. It is designed to allow the user to record each payment on a loan as they are made.
If you go to the above page, scroll down, and you’ll see a lot of tutorials. Read #1 to get started. Then #25 deals specifically with your needs.
With the web calculators, it is not possible to save your work. If you have a Windows computer, and you don’t want to enter the payments each time, you can look at the C-Value! software program. It works like the recommended calculator and it has the ability to save what you entered. Of course, you can try the UFC for a few months to see how you like it since you will only be dealing with a few months of payments.