Tool · Money
Pick a monthly payment you're weighing, type in your down payment, a rate and the yearly tax and insurance, and the calculator works backward to the home price that payment buys — and shows the payment as a share of your take-home pay, beside the ratios the mortgage programs publish.
Where does each number come from?
- Monthly payment you're weighing
- Yours to pick. The whole bill — loan, tax, insurance, dues — since that’s what leaves your account.
- Take-home pay, per month
- Optional. With it, the calculator shows the payment as a share of what comes home. Your pay stub’s net pay, times pay periods in a month.
- Pay before taxes, per month
- Also optional, and it’s what the loan programs measure against. The top line on the stub.
- Down payment
- The cash you’d bring, in dollars.
- Rate and term
- Freddie Mac’s weekly average for a thirty-year loan is the starting rate; a lender’s quote has yours. Fifteen years is the other option, at its own rate.
- Property tax and insurance, per year, and dues per month
- Rough figures at this stage, since you don’t have a house yet. Listings in the area you’re looking at show the tax history and any dues, and an insurer will quote a typical house in that ZIP code.
What moves the answer?
Let’s say you’re weighing $2,500 a month, with $30,000 down, and you figure $4,000 a year of tax and $1,800 of insurance on the kind of house you’re looking at. Tax and insurance take about $480 of the $2,500, leaving about $2,020 for the loan. At 7% over thirty years, $2,020 a month carries a loan of about $305,000, so the payment buys a house at about $335,000.
If you take home $7,000 a month, that $2,500 is about 36% of it. Put $500 a month more toward the payment and the price goes up by about $75,000; a rate one point lower buys about $34,000 more house for the same payment. Those two — the payment and the rate — move the price more than anything else on the page, and only one of them is yours to set.
What does the calculator take as given?
- The rate
- Starts at 6.95% for thirty years and 6.26% for fifteen, Freddie Mac’s averages for the week of 17 September 2026. Both move weekly.
- The program ratios shown beside your share
- Are the ones the debt-to-income page quotes in full, from the programs’ own handbooks as of 21 September 2026: FHA’s 31% of gross income for the housing payment, up to 40% with two compensating factors; Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s 36% of gross income for all debts on a manually underwritten loan, higher with their listed conditions; the VA’s 41% guide and its leftover-income test. They’re measured against pay before taxes, so the calculator shows that share too when you’ve typed the gross figure. None of them is a rule about what you can carry; each is a lender’s rule about what it will lend.
- Mortgage insurance
- Isn’t in the working. Below 20% down, a conventional loan carries it and it comes out of the same monthly payment, so the price the calculator reports is a little high for a small down payment; the mortgage payment calculator has the box for it.
- What's left out
- Closing costs, which come out of the same cash as the down payment. Maintenance, which isn’t in anyone’s ratio. Your other debts, which the programs count and this page doesn’t; the debt-to-income page adds them in.
Twenty-five hundred a month with thirty thousand down is one made-up buyer; the listings in your area carry the tax and dues, your pay stub carries both income lines, and a lender's quote carries the rate that turns the payment into a price.
Sources
- Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey — week of 17 September 2026: 30-year fixed 6.95%; 15-year fixed 6.26%.
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Handbook 4000.1, edition of 12 August 2026 — II.A.5.d.viii, Approvable Ratio Requirements (Manual).
- Fannie Mae, Single Family Selling Guide, B3-6-02 (published 2 September 2026); Freddie Mac, Seller/Servicer Guide, Section 5401.2 (13 August 2026).
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Lenders Handbook, VA Pamphlet 26-7, Chapter 4, Topic 10.