Mortgage Calculator

When you take out a fixed-rate mortgage, every monthly payment does two jobs at once: it pays down the balance you still owe, called the principal, and it covers the interest that accrued on that remaining balance during the month. Early in the loan the balance is large, so most of each payment is interest; as the years pass and the balance shrinks, a growing share goes to principal until, at the very last payment, you clear the loan. This calculator takes your home price, down payment, annual interest rate, and loan term and works that whole schedule backward into a single monthly figure that stays the same from your first payment to your last. The four outputs — estimated monthly payment, loan amount, total of all payments, and total interest — are four views of one decision. The monthly payment is what has to fit your budget; the loan amount is what you actually finance; the total of payments is everything you hand over by the end; the total interest is the premium you pay for borrowing instead of paying cash. Reading them together is the difference between "I can afford the payment" and "I understand what this house really costs."

The down payment is the single input here that quietly changes almost everything downstream. Because it subtracts directly from the home price to set your loan amount, a larger down payment shrinks the balance the interest is calculated on every single month. That lowers both your monthly payment and your total interest, and the two effects compound: a smaller balance means less interest each month, which means more of each payment reaches principal, which means the loan is paid off by a slightly smaller balance next month, and so on. As a rule of thumb, every extra $10,000 you put down on a 30-year loan at 6 percent trims roughly $60 off the monthly payment and saves about $22,000 in total interest over the life of the loan — so a bigger down payment is rarely just "spending more up front." It can also let you avoid private mortgage insurance, which lenders typically require when you put down less than 20 percent and which adds a recurring cost on top of your payment until you build enough equity. Enter the down payment you expect to make and watch the loan amount and interest figures move; if the monthly payment still looks tight, a slightly larger down payment is often the most direct lever you have.

The loan term — how many years you take to repay — is the biggest driver of total cost after the interest rate itself. A 30-year mortgage keeps the payment low and predictable, which is why it is the default for most home buyers, but it also leaves the balance outstanding for three decades, so the interest has a very long time to accumulate. A 15-year mortgage nearly doubles the monthly payment but repays the balance in half the time, and because the balance falls so much faster, the total interest is often less than half of what the 30-year loan would charge. To make it concrete: on a $280,000 loan at 6 percent, the 30-year term shows a payment near $1,679 and about $324,000 in total interest, while the 15-year term shows a payment near $2,363 but only about $146,000 in total interest — roughly $178,000 saved for accepting a higher monthly cost. The practical question is not "which term is cheaper" (the shorter one almost always is) but "what payment can you comfortably afford." A good approach is to choose the shortest term whose payment fits your budget rather than the longest term whose payment feels easy, because the easy payment is quietly the most expensive one over time. If the only way a 30-year payment fits is by stretching the term, that can be a sign the home price is more than you can comfortably carry.

This tool estimates the principal-and-interest portion of your mortgage only, which is the part most people mean by "the monthly payment," but it is not the whole picture of what you will actually pay to own the home. Property taxes, homeowner's insurance, and (when your down payment is under 20 percent) private mortgage insurance are usually collected by the lender each month and held in escrow, so they sit on top of the principal and interest this calculator shows. Because those amounts vary by location and lender, they are deliberately excluded here rather than guessed at. Likewise, this calculator models a fixed rate only: if you have an adjustable-rate mortgage, the payment shown reflects just the starting fixed rate and will change if the underlying index moves. Use the number here as the core of your budget — the part you control most directly — then add your local tax and insurance estimates on top to see the full monthly commitment before you make an offer.