Mortgage Calculator
Home & loan
Enter the home price to begin.
Advanced options
Enter the home price to begin.
How this is calculated
- 1Home price − down payment = loan amount: $0 − $0 = $0
- 2Loan amortized at the monthly rate over 360 payments = P&I: $0/mo
- 3P&I + tax + insurance + PMI + HOA = full monthly payment: $0
- 4Total of all payments − loan amount = total interest: $0
- 5Loan amount + total interest = total loan cost: $0
Formulas
| Metric | Formula | Your value |
|---|---|---|
| Loan amount | Home price − down payment | $0 |
| Principal & interest | Loan amortized at the monthly rate over the term | $0 |
| Monthly payment (PITI) | P&I + tax + insurance + PMI + HOA | $0 |
| Total interest | Total of payments − loan amount | $0 |
| Total loan cost | Loan amount + total interest | $0 |
| Loan-to-value | Loan amount ÷ home price | 0.0% |
Your inputs
| Input | What it is | Your value |
|---|---|---|
| Home price | Purchase price of the home | $0 |
| Down payment | Cash paid upfront, lowering the loan | 0% · $0 |
| Interest rate | Annual interest rate on the loan | 0.00% |
| Loan term | Years to repay the loan in full | 30 yrs |
| Payment frequency | How often you make a payment | Monthly |
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- United States mortgage planning model
- Rules and time period
- User-entered planning assumptions; rates, taxes, insurance, PMI, HOA charges, and fees are not live quotes.
- Scope and limitations
- Educational PITI and amortization estimate, not a Loan Estimate. Actual rates, APR, taxes, insurance, PMI, HOA charges, escrow, fees, and eligibility depend on the property and lender.
- Source links checked
- Sep 19, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter the home price and your down payment percentage. The down payment sets your loan-to-value ratio, which is what decides whether PMI applies at all — so this one field moves more of the answer than any other.
- 02
Set the interest rate and the loan term. A quoted rate is not the same as an APR: the rate drives your payment, while the APR folds in fees and is the figure to compare between lenders.
- 03
Read the headline monthly payment. It is the full PITI figure — principal, interest, taxes and insurance — not the principal-and-interest number most quotes advertise.
- 04
Open Advanced and enter property tax, home insurance, PMI and any HOA dues, all as annual amounts except HOA which is monthly. These are the costs that separate a realistic payment from an optimistic one, and they are usually collected with your mortgage through escrow.
- 05
Still in Advanced, add your gross monthly income for a debt-to-income check, and switch to a biweekly schedule to see what 26 half-payments a year do to the payoff date.
- 06
Add an extra monthly payment to see the years and the interest it removes, then read the year-by-year amortization table below to watch the principal-to-interest split reverse over the life of the loan.
Formula
Loan amount = home price − down payment. The monthly principal & interest is the level payment that amortizes that loan over the term: P&I = L × [ r(1+r)^n ] ÷ [ (1+r)^n − 1 ] where L is the loan amount, r is the monthly rate (annual rate ÷ 12) and n is the number of monthly payments (years × 12). The page waits for a rate above 0% before it prices the loan. Your full monthly payment (PITI) adds the monthly slices of property tax, home insurance, PMI and HOA on top of P&I. Total interest is every payment summed minus the loan amount; total loan cost is the loan amount plus that interest.
Example
On a $500,000 home with 20% down ($100,000), you borrow $400,000. At 6% over 30 years the principal & interest is about $2,398/month. Add $500/mo property tax and $150/mo insurance and your PITI is roughly $3,048/month. Over the full term you'd pay about $463,000 in interest — more than the amount borrowed. Paying an extra $300/month would clear the loan around 6 years early and save tens of thousands in interest.
Definitions
- PITI
- Principal, Interest, Taxes and Insurance — the four parts of a full monthly housing payment, and what a lender means by your payment.
- P&I
- Principal and interest only. The figure most advertised rates quote, and typically 60-75% of what you actually pay each month.
- Principal
- The loan balance itself. The portion of each payment that goes to principal builds your equity; everything else is a cost.
- Interest rate vs APR
- The rate sets your monthly payment. The APR adds lender fees and points, expressed as a yearly rate, which is why it is the fair number for comparing offers.
- Amortization
- The schedule that splits every payment between interest and principal. Early payments are mostly interest because interest is charged on a balance that has barely moved.
- PMI
- Private mortgage insurance, generally required when your down payment is under 20%. It protects the lender, not you, and can usually be removed once you reach sufficient equity.
- LTV
- Loan-to-value — the loan divided by the home's value. 80% or below is the usual threshold for avoiding PMI.
- DTI
- Debt-to-income — your monthly debt payments divided by gross monthly income. Lenders use it to size what they will approve.
- Escrow
- The account your lender uses to collect tax and insurance monthly and pay those bills when due. It is why a tax increase shows up as a mortgage payment increase.
- Property tax
- An annual local levy on the assessed value of the home. It never ends, it rises over time, and it is the T in PITI.
- Homeowners insurance
- Required by every lender. Premiums vary sharply by location and have risen fastest in areas exposed to weather risk.
- HOA dues
- Homeowners association fees for shared maintenance and amenities. Not part of the loan, but counted by lenders against your DTI.
- Biweekly payment
- Paying half the monthly amount every two weeks. Twenty-six half-payments equal thirteen monthly payments a year, so one extra payment goes to principal annually.
- Extra payment
- Any amount above the scheduled payment, applied entirely to principal. Because it removes balance that would otherwise accrue interest for decades, its effect is far larger than its size.
Good to know
What a mortgage payment is actually made of
A mortgage payment has four parts, and the industry has a habit of quoting one of them. Principal repays the loan. Interest is the lender's charge for it. Taxes are the annual property levy your local government sets. Insurance is the homeowners policy every lender requires. Together they are called PITI, and PITI is what leaves your account each month. Advertised rates and payment quotes almost always show principal and interest only. On a typical purchase the other two components add 25 to 40 percent on top. A $2,000 payment quote can be a $2,700 reality once tax and insurance are collected, and neither of those is optional or negotiable with the lender. Two further costs commonly ride alongside. Private mortgage insurance applies when your down payment is under 20 percent, and it is charged monthly until you clear the equity threshold. Homeowners association dues, if the property has them, are not part of the loan at all but are still money you must pay every month and are still counted by lenders against your income. This calculator leads with the full figure deliberately. The gap between the advertised payment and the real one is where affordability decisions go wrong, and it goes wrong in only one direction — nobody discovers their payment is lower than they were told. The composition also shifts over time in a way worth understanding. Principal and interest are fixed for the life of a fixed-rate loan. Taxes and insurance are not: property is reassessed, budgets rise, and insurers reprice. A payment that is fixed in the sense that matters to the lender is not fixed in the sense that matters to your budget. Over a decade the tax and insurance share of the payment typically grows, which is the main reason a housing payment that felt comfortable at purchase can feel tight years later without anything having gone wrong.
Amortization: why early payments barely touch the balance
Interest on a mortgage is charged on the outstanding balance, and at the start the balance is at its maximum. That single fact explains the shape of the whole loan. In the first year of a 30-year mortgage the great majority of every payment is interest. The principal portion is small, so the balance falls slowly, so next month's interest charge is almost as large as this month's. The process is self-reinforcing at the beginning and only gradually reverses. On a typical 30-year loan it takes roughly the first half of the term before more of a payment goes to principal than to interest. The amortization table below the calculator makes this visible year by year, and it is worth actually reading rather than skimming. People are frequently startled by how little of the balance has moved after five years of payments, and that surprise is the reason so many are shocked at how much they still owe when they sell early. The practical consequence is that the loan's cost is front-loaded. Selling or refinancing in the first few years means you have paid a great deal of interest and built comparatively little equity, and any appreciation you have earned is doing most of the work. It is also why moving frequently is expensive in a way that the monthly payment never reveals. The same arithmetic is what makes extra payments so effective early. A dollar of extra principal in year one removes a dollar that would otherwise have accrued interest for twenty-nine more years. The same dollar in year twenty-five removes only five years of interest. Extra payments are not equally valuable across the life of the loan — they are dramatically more valuable at the start, which is exactly when most buyers have the least spare cash. That tension is real and there is no clever way around it, but knowing it exists helps you weigh a windfall correctly.
The rate, the APR, and what actually moves your payment
The interest rate determines your monthly payment. The APR is a different number and answers a different question. APR expresses the rate together with the lender's fees and any points, restated as a single annual percentage. Because it folds in the cost of getting the loan rather than just the cost of holding it, it is the fair basis for comparing two offers. A loan advertised at a lower rate but carrying heavy origination fees can easily have a higher APR than one at a slightly higher rate with none — and the second loan is the cheaper one, even though its headline number looks worse. What moves the rate you are offered is mostly outside your control and partly inside it. The market sets the general level, largely tracking longer-term bond yields rather than any single announced rate. Within that, your credit score, your loan-to-value, the loan type, the property type and the term all adjust the price you personally see. Credit score is usually the largest of the personal factors, and a lower loan-to-value typically improves pricing, particularly at the 20 and 25 percent marks. The sensitivity is worth internalising. On a large loan over thirty years, a rate difference that looks negligible — a quarter of a percentage point — changes the monthly payment by a noticeable amount and the total interest by tens of thousands of dollars. That is why shopping several lenders is one of the highest-return hours available to a buyer, and why credit inquiries for a mortgage within a short window are generally treated as a single inquiry precisely so that shopping is not penalized. One caution about timing: nobody reliably predicts rates. Buying a house you can afford at today's rate, with the option to refinance if rates fall, is a decision you control. Waiting for a rate you have forecast is a bet, and a house you wanted may not be there when it resolves.
PMI: what it is, what it costs, and how it ends
Private mortgage insurance is charged when your down payment is below 20 percent of the value. It exists to protect the lender against loss if you default. It provides you with nothing at all, and understanding that clearly is the first step to treating it correctly. It is not, however, a reason to delay buying indefinitely. PMI is the price of entering with less cash, and for many buyers that trade is worth making: it converts a large one-off barrier into a monthly cost that ends. Waiting several years to reach 20 percent while paying rent and watching prices move is not automatically the cheaper path. On a conventional loan the insurance ends. Once your balance reaches 80 percent of the original value you can generally request cancellation, and at 78 percent it typically drops automatically. You can reach that point faster in two ways: paying down principal, or the home appreciating enough that an appraisal supports the new ratio. Lenders have procedures for both, and the request is yours to make — a mortgage servicer will apply the automatic termination but will not usually volunteer the earlier cancellation. FHA loans behave differently and the difference is expensive. Mortgage insurance on most modern FHA loans runs for the life of the loan regardless of equity, which means the only way out is refinancing into a conventional loan once you qualify. Buyers who take an FHA loan for its easier credit requirements should plan that refinance as part of the strategy rather than discovering the constraint years later. Enter your PMI figure as an annual amount in Advanced. Rates vary with your credit score and loan-to-value, so use your own quote rather than a rule of thumb where you have one — the spread between a strong and a weak credit profile on the same loan is wide enough to change the decision about how much to put down.
Taxes, insurance and escrow: the part that keeps rising
The two components of your payment that are not fixed are the two that grow. Property tax is an annual local levy on the assessed value of your home. It funds schools, county and municipal budgets, and it moves for two independent reasons: reassessment of your property, and rate changes made by taxing bodies. Either alone raises your bill, and both frequently move in the same year. In some states a sale triggers reassessment, which is why a new owner's tax can jump sharply above the previous owner's for the identical house — checking what a property will be assessed at after purchase, rather than what the seller currently pays, is a step many buyers skip. Homeowners insurance is required by every lender and has risen sharply in recent years in areas exposed to weather and wildfire risk. In some markets it has become one of the fastest-growing components of the cost of owning, and it is worth obtaining a real quote for a specific address rather than a general estimate, because the variation between neighbouring areas can be severe. Both are usually collected through escrow. Your lender takes roughly a twelfth of the annual total with each payment, holds it, and pays the bills when due. This is convenient and it hides the mechanism. When taxes or premiums rise, the annual escrow analysis raises your monthly collection — and adds a catch-up amount for the months already underpaid, which is why the increase can feel disproportionate to the underlying change. The consequence to plan for is simple: a fixed-rate mortgage fixes the interest, not the payment. Budgeting as though your housing cost is frozen for thirty years is a mistake with a predictable direction. Leaving room for the tax and insurance components to grow is part of buying within your means, and it is the room most often left out.
Extra payments, biweekly schedules, and what they are worth
Any amount you pay above the scheduled payment goes entirely to principal, and because it removes balance that would otherwise accrue interest for the remaining term, its effect is far out of proportion to its size. Enter a figure in the extra payment field and the calculator shows two things: the years removed from the term and the interest saved. On a typical 30-year loan a modest monthly addition commonly cuts several years off the schedule and tens of thousands off the interest. The saving comes from the same arithmetic that makes early payments mostly interest — you are canceling decades of future charges on the amount you prepay. The biweekly schedule is the same idea with a different label. Paying half your monthly amount every two weeks produces 26 half-payments a year, which is 13 monthly payments rather than 12. The thirteenth goes to principal. You can replicate it exactly by dividing your monthly payment by twelve and adding that amount yourself, which is worth knowing because services that set up biweekly plans sometimes charge for something you can do for free. Check also that your servicer applies the extra to principal rather than holding it toward the next payment; the two are not the same and only one of them shortens the loan. Whether prepaying is the right use of the money is a separate question from whether it works. It is a guaranteed return equal to your mortgage rate, tax-free in effect, which is genuinely attractive when rates are high. Against that: money paid into a house is illiquid, and higher-return uses may exist — an employer retirement match, or clearing higher-interest debt, both of which usually come first. Confirm as well that your loan has no prepayment penalty, which is uncommon on modern residential mortgages but not unheard of. The decision is a comparison, not a virtue. Run the numbers here, then weigh them against what else the same dollars could do.
Affordability: what a lender approves and what you can live with
Lenders decide using debt-to-income. Two ratios matter: the front-end ratio, your housing cost as a share of gross monthly income, and the back-end ratio, all your monthly debt payments as a share of it. A widely cited guide is 28 percent front-end and 36 percent back-end, though real limits vary considerably by loan program and can run higher with strong credit, low loan-to-value or substantial reserves. Enter your gross monthly income in Advanced for that check. But treat the result as the lender's answer to the lender's question — will this borrower probably keep paying? — which is not the same as whether the payment leaves you a life. The gap between the two is where most housing regret lives. Approval is calculated on gross income, before tax, retirement contributions, health premiums and everything else that reduces what actually arrives. It does not know about childcare, a car you are about to replace, a family member you support, or the fact that your income is variable. It also assumes nothing changes, and something usually does. A more useful test is to take the full PITI figure this calculator produces, add a realistic maintenance allowance of one to two percent of the home's value annually, and ask whether that total is comfortable against your actual take-home pay in a bad month rather than a good one. If the answer only works when everything goes right, the house is too expensive regardless of what the approval letter says. The practical version of this advice: get pre-approved to know your ceiling, then set your own budget below it and shop to that. Buyers who shop to the ceiling almost always find something they love at the ceiling, and the discipline is far harder to apply after seeing the house than before.
What this calculator does not model
The principal and interest calculation here is exact for a fixed-rate loan, and the PITI figure is as accurate as the tax, insurance and PMI numbers you enter. Several real costs and cases sit outside it, and knowing which is part of using it well. Closing costs are not included. They commonly run 2 to 5 percent of the purchase price, are due in cash at closing on top of your down payment, and are the single most common reason a buyer arrives short. The down payment calculator sizes them alongside your deposit. Maintenance is not included, because it is not part of a mortgage payment — but it is unavoidable and commonly budgeted at 1 to 2 percent of the home's value each year. Over a decade on a typical home that is a substantial figure, and it falls entirely on owners. Adjustable-rate mortgages are not modeled. This calculator assumes a fixed rate for the whole term; if you are considering an ARM, the reset behavior and rate caps are the whole question and the ARM calculator handles them. Also outside scope: rate locks and float-down provisions, points and lender credits, seller concessions, loan-level pricing adjustments that alter your rate by credit score and loan-to-value, mortgage insurance rules specific to FHA, VA and USDA programs, state and lender-specific fees, and any tax treatment of mortgage interest, which depends on whether you itemize at all. Use this to size the monthly commitment accurately and to see what extra payments and different terms actually do. Use a lender's Loan Estimate for the binding figures — it is a standardised form precisely so that offers can be compared line by line, and it is the document that governs.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the payment here higher than the one my lender quoted?
Because this is the full PITI figure and most quotes are principal and interest only. Property tax, homeowners insurance, PMI and HOA dues are real monthly costs collected alongside the loan, and together they commonly add 25-40% to the advertised number. A payment that looks affordable at P&I can be uncomfortable at PITI, which is exactly why this calculator leads with the complete figure.
How much do I actually need for a down payment?
Less than the traditional 20% for most buyers — conventional loans go down to 3%, FHA to 3.5%, and VA and USDA loans to zero for those who qualify. The 20% figure is not a requirement; it is the point at which PMI stops applying. Putting down less is a legitimate choice, it simply costs more per month and builds equity more slowly.
What is PMI and how do I get rid of it?
Private mortgage insurance is charged when your down payment is under 20%, and it protects the lender if you default — it does nothing for you. On a conventional loan you can generally request removal once your balance falls to 80% of the original value, and it typically drops automatically at 78%. Paying down principal or a rising home value can both get you there sooner. FHA loans work differently: mortgage insurance often lasts the life of the loan unless you refinance.
Should I take a 15-year or a 30-year loan?
A 15-year loan carries a lower rate and dramatically less total interest, but a much higher monthly payment. A 30-year keeps the payment low and leaves room in the budget, at the cost of paying far more over time. A middle path many people prefer: take the 30-year for the flexibility, then add an extra monthly payment voluntarily. You capture most of the interest saving while keeping the option to stop in a bad month.
How much difference does an extra monthly payment really make?
More than most people expect, because it removes principal that would otherwise accrue interest for decades. A few hundred dollars a month on a typical 30-year loan commonly cuts years off the term and tens of thousands off the interest. Enter your figure in Advanced and the calculator shows both. The effect is largest in the early years, when almost all of your scheduled payment is going to interest anyway.
Is the biweekly schedule a trick?
No, but the mechanism is simpler than it is often sold. Paying half your monthly amount every two weeks means 26 half-payments a year, which is 13 monthly payments rather than 12. The extra one goes entirely to principal. You can get the identical result by dividing your monthly payment by twelve and adding that to each payment yourself, without paying a service to set it up.