Home Affordability Calculator
Reverse-solve from income, debts, down payment, and the lender's DTI cap to find your maximum home price. Includes PITI breakdown at the affordability ceiling.
Last reviewed: · Reviewed by the Money Scale editorial team · How we source our data
Power mode. Every input exposed, every assumption sourced, charts and shareables.
$100,000
$500/mo (car, student, cards)
$50,000
36% (36% safe · 43% conventional · 50% FHA max)
30-year fixed
1.10% / year
$1,800
$0
Maximum affordable home price
$372,461
Loan amount
$322,461
Max all-in / month
$2,500
Front-end DTI
30.0%
Back-end DTI
36.0%
🏠 $372,461 max
On $100,000 income with $500/mo existing debts and $50,000 down, max home price is $372,461 at a 36% DTI cap.
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The Home Affordability Calculator reverse-solves from your income, existing debts, down payment, and the lender's back-end DTI cap to find your maximum qualifying home price. Because property tax is a % of home value (which is what we're solving for), the math is an implicit equation — solved via fixed-point iteration. The lender's max isn't your comfort max; use this as the ceiling, not the target.
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How this calculator works
- Enter your annual gross income (pre-tax).
- List your existing monthly debts — car, student loans, minimum credit-card payments.
- Enter your available down payment and pick a DTI cap. 36% is the conservative industry guideline; 43% is the conventional-loan maximum; FHA can go higher.
- Set the mortgage rate (today's average 30-year fixed is sourced live), term, property tax rate, insurance, and HOA.
- Read the max home price + the all-in PITI at that price. A commonly-cited rule of thumb is that buyers often target around 80% of what they can QUALIFY for to leave breathing room — it's a heuristic, not a recommendation for your situation.
max_PI = income/12 × DTI_cap − existing_debts − tax(home) − insurance − HOA then max_loan = max_PI × annuity_factorSolved iteratively because property tax depends on home value (which we're solving for). Each iteration recomputes max_PI given the current home price, derives max_loan from the standard annuity factor, and updates home_price = max_loan + down_payment. Converges in 5–8 passes.
- income
- Annual gross income
- DTI_cap
- Lender's back-end DTI cap (36% conservative, 43% conventional, 50% FHA max)
- existing_debts
- Sum of existing monthly debt obligations
- tax(home)
- Property tax as % of home value, divided by 12
- annuity_factor
- Standard mortgage amortization factor: r(1+r)ⁿ / ((1+r)ⁿ − 1)
Frequently asked questions
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