Free Home Affordability Calculator

How Much House Can You Afford?

Your estimate appears in the results card above and updates as you type. Three figures matter most, and they answer different questions.

The breakdown panel in the results card shows both guideline ceilings side by side and marks which one is actually binding. That distinction is practical: if the total-debt ceiling is binding, clearing a car loan will raise your budget faster than a pay rise will.

What Is a Home Affordability Calculator?

A home affordability calculator works backward from your income. Instead of asking what a particular house would cost each month, it asks how large a payment your finances can support, then converts that payment into a price range.

That is the opposite of a mortgage payment calculator, and the distinction matters when you are still deciding what to look at. A mortgage calculator starts with a home price and tells you the payment. This house affordability calculator starts with your income and debts and tells you the price. Most buyers need both, in that order: this one to set the search range, the other to price a specific listing.

The calculation rests on mortgage affordability ratios that lenders have used for decades, comparing your housing payment and your total debt against gross monthly income. Those ratios are the reason two households on identical salaries can be quoted very different budgets — the one carrying a car loan and student loans has less room inside the same ceilings.

What a calculator cannot judge is what feels comfortable. It applies a guideline; it does not know your childcare costs, your job security, or how much you want to keep saving. Treat the output as the upper edge of what a lender would likely allow, then decide separately how close to that edge you want to live.

How Affordability Is Calculated

The method is the 28/36 rule, a long-standing underwriting guideline described in consumer guidance from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It sets two ceilings, and whichever bites first is the one that caps your budget.

The 28% front-end ratio

The front-end ratio limits your housing payment to 28% of gross monthly income. Gross means before tax, and the housing payment means the full thing — principal, interest, property taxes and homeowners insurance, plus mortgage insurance and any HOA dues where they apply.

On a $90,000 salary that is $7,500 a month gross, so the housing ceiling is $2,100. Note what this does not say: it is not 28% of take-home pay, and it is not 28% available for the loan alone. Taxes and insurance come out of that $2,100 first, which is why the calculator asks for them separately.

The 36% back-end ratio

The back-end ratio limits all your monthly debt payments combined — housing plus car loans, student loans, personal loans and credit card minimums — to 36% of gross monthly income. This figure is your debt-to-income ratio, and it is often what actually decides an application.

On the same $7,500 gross, the total-debt ceiling is $2,700. Carry $550 of existing debt payments and $2,150 remains for housing — still above the $2,100 front-end limit, so the 28% ratio binds. Carry $800 instead and only $1,900 remains, and now the back-end ratio is what caps you. The calculator reports which one is binding, because the fix differs: one calls for more income, the other for less debt.

What counts as income and debt

Income normally means stable, documentable gross earnings: salary, regular hourly wages, and a co-borrower's income. Bonuses, commission, overtime and self-employment income usually count only with a two-year history, and lenders often average them. One-off windfalls do not count at all.

Debt means recurring obligations that appear on your credit report — the section below covers exactly which. Everyday living costs are excluded from the ratio even though they obviously affect your real budget, which is one reason the guideline can overstate comfort.

Comfort zones: conservative, standard, stretched

The Affordability Guideline selector in the calculator offers three settings. Each pairs a housing ceiling with a total-debt ceiling, both taken as a share of gross monthly income. Here they are on the $90,000 salary used above, which is $7,500 a month gross:

These are ceilings, not targets. Once a budget looks right, you can price a specific home with the mortgage calculator.

The calculator's guideline selector switches between these three, so try all three before deciding how close to the edge to live.

What Counts Toward Your Debt-to-Income Ratio

Lenders build your DTI from recurring obligations on your credit report, not from your whole spending pattern. The CFPB's explainer on what a debt-to-income ratio is sets out the same distinction.

Two details catch people out. First, it is the minimum card payment that counts, not the balance — a large balance with a small minimum hurts your DTI less than people expect, though it costs far more in interest. Second, a loan with only a few payments left may be excluded by some lenders, so paying off a nearly finished car loan sometimes helps less than clearing a newer one.

The practical lever is simple: in the calculator above, lower the monthly debts figure and watch the housing budget respond. If it moves, the back-end ratio is binding and debt repayment buys you more house. If it does not move, you are capped by the 28% housing ratio and only income or a larger down payment will shift it.

How Your Down Payment Affects Affordability

Your income determines the loan you can support. Your down payment sits on top of that loan, so it raises the price you can reach dollar for dollar — add $20,000 of savings and the estimate rises by $20,000, with the monthly payment unchanged.

There is a second, less obvious effect. A larger down payment reduces the loan relative to the home's value, and once you reach 20% equity most conventional loans no longer require private mortgage insurance. Removing that premium frees part of your monthly housing budget, which then supports a slightly larger loan as well. The two effects compound in your favor.

That said, emptying your savings to reach 20% is rarely wise. Closing costs, the escrow cushion your lender collects, moving expenses and the first repairs all arrive at once, and a house with no emergency fund behind it is a fragile arrangement. The first-time home buyer guide walks through the upfront costs that sit alongside the deposit, and our down payment calculator shows exactly what each percentage costs in cash on a given purchase price.

How Your Credit Score and Rate Affect Affordability

Your credit score does not appear in the 28/36 ratios, yet it shapes the result more than almost anything else, because it helps determine the rate you are offered — and the rate decides how much loan a given payment can carry.

The mechanism is worth understanding. Your housing budget is fixed by your income and debts. A higher rate means more of each payment is consumed by interest, so the same budget supports a smaller loan and therefore a lower price. A lower rate does the reverse. Nothing about your income changed; only what the payment buys.

You can see the size of this effect without taking anyone's word for it. Enter one rate in the calculator, note the estimated price, then enter a rate half a point higher and compare. We deliberately do not pre-fill a rate or publish a current one, because rates move constantly and depend on your credit profile, loan size, property type and the day you lock.

Two practical notes. Compare the APR rather than the headline rate when weighing quotes, since it folds in lender fees. And gather quotes within a short window — credit scoring models generally treat multiple mortgage enquiries in a focused period as a single event. Our guide to understanding interest rates covers how lenders price offers.

Home Affordability by Income

The table below is an illustration of the 28/36 guideline only. It shows the two ceilings each income produces and the housing budget that remains after the stated monthly debts. It deliberately stops there: converting a budget into a house price needs an interest rate, and we do not publish one.

One pattern is visible across every row: with these modest debt levels the 28% housing ceiling is the binding limit each time, because the 36% ceiling less debts lands slightly higher. That flips as soon as debts grow — which is exactly what the calculator will show you if you raise the monthly debts field.

Notice too that the housing budget scales linearly with income while house prices do not. Doubling your income doubles the budget, but it does not necessarily double the kind of home you can buy in a given market, because taxes, insurance and the rate all scale with the purchase too.

How to Use This Home Affordability Calculator

Seven fields, and the estimate updates as you type:

1. Enter your gross annual income — before tax, including a co-borrower's income if you are buying together.
2. Add your monthly debt payments: car and student loans, personal loans and credit card minimums. Use the minimum due, not the balance.
3. Enter your down payment — the cash you will actually put toward the purchase, not your total savings.
4. Enter an interest rate you have been quoted. Nothing is pre-filled, because a rate depends on your credit and the day you lock. The ratio results appear without it; the price estimate needs it.
5. Pick the loan term. A longer term supports a larger loan from the same payment, at the cost of far more total interest.
6. Estimate monthly taxes and insurance for the area you are shopping in. These come out of the housing budget before any loan, so guessing low will overstate your price.
7. Choose a guideline. 28/36 is the standard. The conservative and stretched options exist because lenders do apply different ceilings by program.

Read the housing budget first, then the DTI, then the price. Open View Affordability Breakdown to see both ceilings side by side and which one is binding — that tells you whether more income or less debt is the lever that would actually help.

Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere, so run as many versions as you like: with and without a car loan, at two rates, or with a larger deposit.

Our Methodology

The estimate applies the 28/36 guideline: the housing ceiling is 28% of gross monthly income, and the total-debt ceiling is 36% of gross monthly income minus your existing monthly debt payments. The smaller of the two becomes your housing budget. Your monthly taxes and insurance are subtracted from that budget, and whatever remains is converted into a loan using the inverse of the standard amortization formula, P = M × (1 − (1+r)⁻ⁿ) / r. The down payment is then added to give an estimated price. Before release, each ratio, the binding-limit logic, the payment-to-loan inversion and every figure in the table above were recomputed independently and matched to the cent.

The 28/36 rule is a documented lender guideline, not a legal limit. We attribute it rather than assert it, and the calculator offers conservative and stretched alternatives because real underwriting ceilings vary by program and borrower. Approval at a higher ratio is common and does not by itself mean a payment is comfortable.

The interest rate is entirely your input. We do not supply, suggest, average or forecast a mortgage rate, and no figure on this page represents a current market rate. The illustrative table deliberately stops at the ratio ceilings for the same reason — publishing a price column would require inventing a rate.

What the estimate excludes: private mortgage insurance, HOA or condominium dues, closing costs and the escrow cushion collected at closing, maintenance and repairs, utilities, and any lender overlay or program-specific rule. It also cannot verify income or credit, which is what a pre-approval does.

Figures are rounded for display only. If you find one that looks wrong, please tell us — we check every report. See our disclaimer for the limits of these estimates.

Related Calculators

These free tools cover the rest of the picture: