About

What is this?

The purpose of this mortgage affordability calculator is to help people reason about their ability to afford a mortgage.

While its primary aim is to help first time buyers on average incomes calculate whether they can afford to buy a property, it may also help those who: -

Are thinking about buying a home but are unsure of what a mortgage might cost and whether it is affordable.

Are considering the government led Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme and wondering whether you can afford a Help to Buy mortgage (especially for those with a 5% deposit)

Are already on the housing ladder and want to move to a new property.

Features

Once you have inputted your information into the calculator, it will generate: -

A useful report that includes mortgage repayment details, percentage of income reserved for servicing debts and other costs you may need to consider, including Stamp Duty.

A set of graphs that provide an overview of the mortgage in a more visual manner

A handy guide on what might happen if interest rates rise on your mortgage

A unique URL that you can bookmark and return to later, or share with someone else.

Why?

I'm coming to that time in my life where I'm beginning to think about buying a house. The single most frustrating thing to me has been trying to wrap my head around the myriad of topics you need to learn about mortgages and how they work. So I embarked on writing this mortgage calculator to help me see whether buying could be a viable option considering my financial situation.

It is worth noting that there are plenty of similar mortgage calculators out there on the web that perform the same function, e.g.

Couldn't you have just done a spreadsheet?

However I felt these were lacking some critical information such as interest rate rises or not taking into account your take home pay.

Sure, but sharing spreadsheets isn't as fun as writing a website.

Who are you?

My name is Daniel Harper, I work as software developer in London.

For enquiries of a professional nature, you can try contacting me via methods listed on my personal website, however I cannot guarantee a reply.

Acknowledgements

glyphicons.com for the excellent icon set.

Subrat Nayak (ipapun) for the home icon design, part of the "Devine-Icons Part 2" works available at this location. I have modified the colour of the works to suit the purposes of my design. This is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution by license.

Can you afford to buy?

Not in London, where I live.