Home Affordability Calculator

How Much Home Can You Comfortably Afford?

Before searching for the right property, it helps to understand what comfortably fits within your monthly budget. Use our Home Affordability Calculator to estimate a potential home-buying budget based on your income, existing monthly obligations, and the 25/35 budgeting guideline.

Understanding the 25/35 Guideline

A simple way to evaluate housing affordability is to compare your monthly housing expenses and total monthly debt obligations with your gross monthly income.

25% - Housing As a conservative starting point, consider keeping your total monthly housing expense around 25% or less of your gross monthly income. Your housing budget should account for more than just principal and interest. Depending on the property and financing, your actual monthly cost may also include property taxes, homeowners insurance, mortgage insurance, HOA fees, and other expenses.

35% - Housing + Debt Your housing expenses combined with your other recurring monthly debt obligations should generally stay around 35% or less of gross monthly income when using this budgeting guideline. Those obligations might include car payments, student loans, credit cards, personal loans, and other recurring debts.

Comfortable and Approved Aren’t Always the Same Number

A lender may approve financing with different debt-to-income limits than the guideline used by this calculator. Being approved for a particular loan amount also doesn’t necessarily mean that amount will comfortably fit your household budget. Consider your other priorities, savings, transportation, utilities, maintenance, family expenses, retirement, and everyday living, when deciding how much you want to spend on a home. The goal isn’t necessarily to determine the maximum home you can purchase. It’s to understand what payment makes sense for you.