Mortgage Qualifying Calculator - Refi.com (2024)

What does the Mortgage Qualifying Calculator do?

This mortgage qualifying calculator takes all the key information for a mortgage and lets you determine any of three things: 1) How much income you need to qualify for the mortgage, or 2) How much you can borrow, or 3) what your total monthly payment will be for the loan.

To do this, the calculator considers your mortgage rate, down payment, length of the loan, closing costs, property taxes, homeowners’ insurance, points you want to pay and more. You don’t need to input all information to receive a ballpark figure.

Using the Mortgage Qualifying Calculator

The Mortgage Qualifying Calculator is designed to be easy to use and largely self-explanatory. Just fill in the various fields with the information requested. Start by choosing if you want to base the calculation on your annual income, the purchase price of the home you’re looking at or the monthly payment you can afford. Then work down the page entering your other information and the calculator will figure out the other two values for you and display them in gray.

For example:

• Enter your annual income and the Mortgage Qualifying Calculator will determine the maximum purchase price you can afford and the associated monthly payment.
• Enter the purchase price and the calculator will tell you the income you need and the monthly payment required. Or,
• Enter the monthly payment you’re thinking of and the Mortgage Qualifying Calculator will tell you the income needed to qualify and the home purchase price that will cover.

Then go down the rest of the page entering the information requested. Your answers will be displayed in gray at the top of the page. Click “View report” for a detailed breakdown and an amortization report.

Step-by-step guide

Still have questions? Here’s a step-by-step guide to lead you through it.

1. Choose whether you want to calculate based on your annual income, or if you know your ideal price or monthly payment you can search by those instead.
2. Choose the loan term; that is, how many years you’d like to have to repay the mortgage. Remember that shorter loans mean paying less in interest over the life of the loan, and usually a lower mortgage rate as well. But your monthly payments will be higher than on a longer loan.
3. Add in the remaining details such as the interest rate you expect to get, property tax payments and homeowners’s insurance premiums. If you don’t know any of these, leave the default values as these are based upon market averages.
4. Select the relevant button to get a breakdown of your costs either annually or monthly. This will be reflecting in your amortization table when you view your report.
5. Continue for your down payment and closing costs. Not that the Mortgage Qualifying Calculator will assume that all of your cash on hand not going toward closing costs will be used for your down payment, unless you check the box to limit your down payment to no more than 20 percent of the purchase price.
6. Enter your monthly payments for any auto loans, credit cards and other loan payments.
7. Click the green Calculate button to jump back to the top of the tool, which will now be displaying the estimated value of the home you are able to purchase. Click View Report for a simple graph and explanation of how the calculator came to this conclusion.
8. Whatever result you get, click Get FREE Quote to explore your options further.

I’m not sure what my interest rate will be. What should I do?

Fortunately, you don’t have to have a specific mortgage rate in mind to use the Mortgage Qualifying Calculator. You can choose an approximate rate, enter the rest of your information, then use the sliding tool to see how a higher or lower rate will affect your results. That includes changing your amortization table and the interest paid over the life of the loan. You can adjust other values as well to see what effect a different figure there would have.

I don’t know what to enter for property taxes or homeowners’ insurance.

You can leave these and most other boxes blank if you don’t know what those costs might be, and the Mortgage Qualifying Calculator will generate an answer without them. The same for the inputs under Down Payment and Closing Costs, and Total Monthly Debt Payments. But your results will be more accurate and useful if you can provide these figures.

The Mortgage Qualifying Calculator says I can’t afford my dream home. What can I do?

It can be disappointing to learn that the home you have set your heart on is out of financial reach, but don’t give up hope! It may be that you can reach your goal by adjusting some of your other constraints. Perhaps you can save for a little longer in order to amass a larger down payment, or wait until your credit card and loans are paid off.

These small but significant changes could make all the difference and enable you to get the mortgage you require. If the down payment is causing you an issue, you might consider anFHA loan, which offers competitive rates while requiring only 3.5 percent down, even for borrowers with imperfect credit.

My result shows I can afford my new home. What should I do next?

First of all, congratulations! You are now one step closer to owning the home you desire. The next step is to reach out to our team of top-notch mortgage lenders and get started on securing yourself the perfect deal.