House Affordability Calculator

Lenders check two ratios at once, not one. The front-end ratio looks at housing cost alone against income — it doesn't care what other debts you carry. The back-end ratio looks at housing cost plus every other debt payment against income — it's the one your car loan or student loan actually affects. Whichever ratio produces the smaller allowed housing payment is the real limit, which is why paying off a car loan can sometimes raise your affordable home price more than a raise would.

Worked example: $90,000 annual income, $400 in monthly debts, $60,000 down payment, 6.5% rate, 30-year term, standard 28%/36% DTI caps. Back-end math allows a $2,300/month housing payment; front-end math allows only $2,100/month — so front-end is the binding constraint here, landing on a $328,745 max home price.

Property tax is typically a percentage of the home's price — but the home price is exactly what "Find max home price" mode is solving for, so a naive calculator would need to guess a price, check the tax, adjust, and repeat. This calculator instead expresses loan amount, home price, and monthly tax all in terms of one another and solves the resulting equation directly in a single step, giving an exact answer rather than an estimate that's slightly off.

Once you have a target price, our Mortgage Calculator builds out the full amortization schedule, and our Paycheck Calculator shows what that income actually looks like after taxes.