Tool · Money
Add up your monthly debt payments, type in your pay before taxes, and the calculator gives you the ratio lenders call debt-to-income — with and without your housing payment — beside the figures the main mortgage programs print in their own rulebooks.
Where does each number come from?
- Rent or mortgage payment
- Your lease, or the full monthly payment on your mortgage statement including any tax and insurance collected with it.
- Car payments
- From the loan or lease statement.
- Student loan payments
- The monthly amount on your servicer’s statement. If you’re on an income-driven plan, it’s that plan’s payment.
- Credit card minimums
- The minimum payment printed on each statement — not the balance, and not the larger amount if you pay more than the minimum.
- Other required payments
- Personal loans, child support, alimony — anything a court or a contract says you owe monthly. Groceries, utilities and subscriptions don’t count; lenders only count debts.
- Pay before taxes, per month
- Gross monthly income — the top line of your pay stub before anything comes out, times your pay periods in a month. Salary divided by twelve. If you’re paid hourly, the calculator has a helper: hours a week times your rate times fifty-two, divided by twelve.
What moves the answer?
Let’s say you pay $1,500 in rent, $350 on a car, $200 on student loans and $100 in card minimums, and you make $6,000 a month before taxes. Your payments are $2,150, so the ratio is about 36%. Without the rent it’s about 11% — lenders call that the front-end and back-end split, and they look at both.
The housing payment is almost always the biggest piece, which is why the same person can show a 36% ratio as a renter and a very different one as a buyer: the calculator that turns a monthly payment into a home price shows what a given house does to this number.
What does the calculator take as given?
- The program figures beside your ratio
- Are quoted from the programs’ own handbooks, as they read on 21 September 2026.
- FHA loans
- The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s handbook sets the standard ratios at 31% for the housing payment and 43% for all debts, for a manually underwritten loan. With one listed compensating factor — cash reserves, a small jump in housing payment, or leftover income — those rise to 37% and 47%; with two, to 40% and 50%. Below a 580 credit score the standard ratios are the ceiling.
- Conventional loans sold to Fannie Mae
- Its Selling Guide sets 36% for all debts on a manually underwritten loan, up to 45% with the credit score and reserves its matrix lists, and 50% for a loan run through its automated system. Freddie Mac’s guide says the same 36% as a guideline and 45% as the ceiling for manual underwriting.
- VA loans
- The VA’s handbook calls 41% a guide, not a limit, and says its own test is leftover income after the payments — a dollar figure by family size and region, $1,003 a month for a family of four in the South or Midwest, for instance. A ratio over 41% gets a closer look unless that leftover is at least a fifth above the table.
- There is no federal 43% rule
- There used to be one in the federal definition of a qualified mortgage; it was replaced in 2021 with a test based on the loan’s price. The figures above are each program’s own.
- What's left out
- How a particular lender counts overtime, bonuses or self-employment income. What “compensating factors” mean in a given file. Credit score, which decides which row of the FHA table you’re on. And whether a ratio a program allows is one that fits your month, which the handbooks don’t decide either.
The fifteen-hundred-dollar rent and the six-thousand-dollar month are one made-up renter; your pay stub carries the income line and your statements carry every payment, and the ratio takes about a minute once they're in front of you.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Handbook 4000.1, FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook, edition issued 12 August 2026 — Section II.A.5.d.viii, Approvable Ratio Requirements (Manual): 31/43 standard; 37/47 with one compensating factor; 40/50 with two.
- Fannie Mae, Single Family Selling Guide, published 2 September 2026 — B3-6-02, Debt-to-Income Ratios: 36% manual, 45% with matrix requirements, 50% through Desktop Underwriter.
- Freddie Mac, Single-Family Seller/Servicer Guide, Section 5401.2, version of 13 August 2026 — 36% guideline; above 45% ineligible for manual underwriting.
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Lenders Handbook, VA Pamphlet 26-7, Chapter 4 — Topic 10.b, debt-to-income ratio; Table 10, residual incomes by region for loans of $80,000 and above.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Regulation Z, 12 CFR 1026.43(e)(2)(vi) — the general qualified-mortgage price-based test, replacing the 43% debt-to-income requirement effective 2021.