Predicting what it will cost to buy a house is very important for home buyers. The two biggest concerns home buyers have is what are the monthly payments and what is the down payment. Down payments can be tricky. Depending on your credit, any programs that you may qualify for, and down payment assistant programs, your best bet is to talk to a loan officer. (I have a list of loan officers that have been involved in my transactions and that I trust. Just ask me to send it to you.) As to the monthly payments, that can be estimated by a Realtor using calculator apps. My favorite one is Karl’s Mortgage Calculator.

By knowing the price of the house, property taxes, insurance costs, and the mortgage interest rate, you can estimate what your payments will be.

Some of the other nice features of the calculator are showing a table of what the balance of the loan will be every year.

It will also allow you to add-in homeowners association costs, show you what you will owe with principal prepayments and will show you what you can afford to buy with a given monthly payment.

As a Realtor, I find this tool to be very helpful for working with home buyers. It can be found on Google Play and Apple’s app store.