Mortgage & Home Calculators

When I model leveraged real-estate deals at work, the same three numbers move every outcome: the rate, the property tax, and the insurance. The advertised mortgage payment most online calculators show you covers the first one and ignores the other two, which is why borrowers walk into closing surprised by a payment 30 to 40 percent above the principal-and-interest line they were quoted. The tools here calculate the full PITI (principal, interest, taxes, insurance, and the PMI piece when the down payment is under 20%) with state-specific defaults pre-filled from county-level rate tables, the 78% LTV PMI auto-cancellation rule the Homeowners Protection Act requires (not the 80% lenders prefer to quote), and full amortization across the life of the loan. The 51 state pages each pre-fill the median home price, the average property tax rate, and the typical homeowners insurance premium for that state, so you start from a credible baseline rather than national averages that don't match your market. The supporting pages cover the financial-engineering pieces (points buydown, 15 vs 30, the math on refinancing) that change the answer once you've narrowed in on a price range.

PMI: the 78% vs 80% LTV distinction lenders gloss over

Private Mortgage Insurance is required on conventional loans with less than 20% down - that part is well-known. What gets missed: under the federal Homeowners Protection Act, lenders are legally required to automatically cancel PMI when the original loan-to-value ratio reaches 78% based on the original amortization schedule, not the current appraised value. You can also request cancellation at 80% LTV, but that requires a borrower-initiated request, a clean payment history (no 30-day lates in the past 12 months, no 60-day lates in the past 24), and often a fresh appraisal at your cost. On a $387,500 home with 10% down ($348,750 loan), automatic cancellation hits when the balance drops to about $302,250 - which on a 30-year fixed at 6.75% happens roughly 10.5 years in. If your home appreciates faster than the amortization, an 80% LTV request based on current value gets you there sooner, but the lender controls the appraisal process and may charge $400-$600 for it. The cost of PMI typically runs 0.3% to 1.5% of the loan annually, so on a $348,750 loan that's $1,050-$5,200 per year. Knowing the exact removal threshold and the request process is the difference between getting your PMI off in year 7 versus year 11.

Discount points: when buying down the rate actually pays

One discount point equals 1% of the loan amount and typically reduces the interest rate by 0.25 percentage points. On a $348,750 loan at 6.75%, one point costs $3,487.50 and brings the rate to 6.50%, saving roughly $58 per month. Breakeven is about 60 months - five years. That math sounds clean until you layer in what actually happens to most loans: the median first-time-buyer mortgage in the U.S. gets refinanced or paid off via sale within 7 to 9 years. If you refinance year 6 because rates dropped, the points you bought in year 0 stop earning their return the day you pay off the underlying loan. The decision turns on conviction about how long you'll hold this exact loan, not how long you'll own the property. Points make sense when (a) you expect to hold the loan beyond the breakeven window, (b) you're in the top tax bracket and can deduct the points (they're deductible in the year paid for purchase loans, amortized over the loan term for refinances), and (c) rate volatility makes a re-fi unlikely. They don't make sense when you're stretching to qualify - that $3,487.50 is better off in closing-cost reserves.

Property tax variation across 50 states - the number nobody quotes

The advertised mortgage rate is the same coast to coast. The property tax that gets escrowed alongside the payment is anything but. New Jersey averages 2.13% of assessed value annually; Hawaii sits at 0.28%. On the same $500,000 home, that's $10,650 per year versus $1,400 - a 7.6× spread that changes total monthly housing cost by $770. Within a state, the variation gets wider. Texas has no state income tax but pulls its share through property tax averaging 1.60%, with major metros running 2.2-2.7%. California's Prop 13 caps annual increases at 2% over the property's original assessed value, which means a homeowner who bought in 1990 may pay one-fifth what their next-door neighbor pays. The state pages in this section pre-fill the statewide average; for a precise estimate you'll want your county assessor's effective rate, which factors special assessments, mello-roos in California, and school-district levies. The state tax comparison tool plots all 50 states on a property-tax vs income-tax scatter plot, sized by total monthly housing cost.

15 vs 30 year: the rate spread that's not actually saving you money

A 15-year fixed typically prices 0.50 to 0.75 percentage points below a 30-year. On a $348,750 loan, that's the difference between $2,262 per month at 6.75% (30-year) and $2,891 at 6.0% (15-year): a higher monthly payment but $193,000 less total interest paid over the life of the loan. The intuitive read is "15-year wins." The honest financial-engineering read is more nuanced. The $629 monthly difference, committed to the 15-year, is opportunity cost: if invested in an S&P 500 index fund at a long-run 7% real return over 30 years, that stream becomes roughly $760,000. The 15-year buyer paid off the house in 15 years, then had 15 years of zero mortgage payment to invest the freed-up $2,891 monthly, which compounds to about $890,000. The 30-year buyer who invested the difference all along ends up with the larger total. The math flips back the other way when you adjust for required risk capacity, behavioral consistency (will you actually invest the difference?), and the certainty premium of a paid-off house. The 15-year is the safer answer; the 30-year with the spread invested is the optimal one if the assumptions hold.

Jumbo loans and the 2026 conforming limit

For 2026, the conforming loan limit set by the Federal Housing Finance Agency is $806,500 in most U.S. counties. High-cost areas (designated by FHFA based on local median home prices) get higher ceilings, up to $1,209,750 in places like San Francisco, Manhattan, and parts of Hawaii. Any loan above the local limit is a jumbo, which historically priced 0.25-0.50 percentage points above conforming due to the lack of Fannie/Freddie agency backstop. Through 2024 and into 2026, the spread inverted briefly - jumbo rates ran slightly below conforming for borrowers with strong credit profiles, because lenders keeping jumbos in portfolio competed for high-quality balance-sheet borrowers. The standard underwriting bar is stricter: 700+ credit score, 10-20% down, debt-to-income under 43%, and often 6-12 months of liquid reserves required. For self-employed or RSU-heavy borrowers, the documentation requirement is materially more painful. If you're shopping near the conforming line, splitting into a conforming first plus a HELOC or piggyback second can keep both pieces in the agency-backed market and avoid jumbo entirely.