Calculators To Help You With A Mortgage

There are a variety of free mortgage calculators available on the Internet. These can be useful for determining how much home you can afford, whether to buy a home or continue renting, and what your monthly payment will be. Here are descriptions of a few different calculators.

How Much Home Can You Get


It's a good idea to know approximately how much money you can borrow for a home before you spend time looking for a new house. An affordability calculator will use information about a loan (such as interest rate and the length of the loan), the cost of taxes and insurance for the property, your debts (auto loans, credit card debt, etc), and your income to calculate the maximum mortgage you might obtain.

Monthly Payment

Your monthly mortgage payment is composed of more than just principal and interest. It also includes taxes and insurance. When figuring out whether you can afford a loan, you should look at the entire monthly payment, not just the cost of the home or how much total you'll pay over the life of the loan. A payment calculator helps you do this.

Rent or Buy?

A 'rent or buy' calculator helps you see how much more money you might gain or lose by buying a home as opposed to renting. A key element to consider in this calculation is the time period looked at. For instance, if you were to rent a home for five years, you'd save $80,000 in monthly payments compared to if you were to buy a home. However, if you were to buy a home, when you sold it, you'd make that money back plus an extra $5,000. This calculator can help you see all this so that you can make the best decision about whether to rent or buy.

To Refinance or Not to Refinance?

If you currently own your own home, you may wonder whether or not it would be beneficial to refinance. There is a calculator for this too. One of the factors to include when considering whether to refinance or buy is how soon you'll sell your home. For example, if you plan to sell your home in five years, you might end up saving $1,500. However, if you were to sell it in ten years, your savings could be $4,000, while if it sold in 25 years, you would lose $7,500.

Loan Comparison

Mortgage lenders offer a variety of loan products that you can choose from, but how do you know which one is best? A loan comparison calculator allows you to enter in key values such as the interest rates, points, and closing costs. The calculator will then show multiple elements of comparison. Key among these are the monthly payments and the total savings over the life of the loan. Such a calculator can help you know which loan to choose. Be careful though, because different loans can have different amounts of mortgage insurance associated with them, and the calculator might not take that into account.

Bi-Weekly Payments

Will making a mortgage payment every two weeks save you more money than paying once a month? A calculator can tell you this. You'll be able to see how much interest you'll save and how much sooner you'll pay off the loan. A good calculator will take into account the fact that you'll lose some tax savings by paying off the mortgage sooner, and will give you a "net savings".

Using some or all of these mortgage calculators can help you make a better decision regarding buying or refinancing a home.

By: Direct Mortgage

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Learn more about buying a home and Salt Lake City mortgages by visiting Direct Mortgage at www.directhouse.com