What this house actually costs
— and the income it takes to hold it
Enter an address, a closing date and a price. Get the real monthly carry — principal, interest, property tax, insurance, mortgage insurance — the equity built since, and the salary that payment quietly demands.
How much income do you need to buy a house? Lenders size a mortgage so that total housing cost — principal, interest, property tax, insurance and any HOA fee — stays near 28% of gross monthly income. FHA allows 31%, and total debt service is usually capped between 36% and 43%. So a $2,500 monthly payment implies roughly $107,000 of household income at the 28% standard, or about $83,000 if stretched to 36%.
The hard part is not the ratio, it is the payment. Property tax varies from 0.29% of value in Hawaii to 1.88% in New Jersey and Illinois, homeowners insurance runs from about $800 a year in Utah to $3,000 in Florida, and mortgage insurance adds $90 to $250 a month whenever the down payment is under 20%. This calculator works out all four for a specific address and closing date, then runs the ratio backwards.
Four houses, four different problems
Each one opens the calculator already filled in. Nothing here is a real person's home — they are ordinary purchases in ordinary markets, chosen because each breaks a different assumption people make about what a house costs.
The PMI nobody cancelled
A $224,900 condo bought with 5% down in May 2020. Market appreciation pushed it past 20% equity in late 2021 — but the automatic cancellation date is 2028.
Open in the calculator →Bought at the very top
$610,000 in May 2022, the month Austin peaked. Six years of payments, and almost all of the equity is principal rather than appreciation.
Open in the calculator →Where tax eats the payment
$385,000 in 2019. Illinois property tax runs close to a third of principal and interest — and the house has quietly outperformed most of the Sun Belt.
Open in the calculator →Fifteen years under Prop 13
$520,000 in 2011. The assessment has been capped at 2% a year ever since, so the tax bill bears almost no relation to what the house is now worth.
Open in the calculator →Three numbers, each one checkable
No black box. Every figure on the results page names the rate, the ratio or the survey it came from, and you can override any assumption you disagree with.
The monthly carry
Principal and interest at the rate actually available the month it closed, property tax at the local effective rate, insurance at the state average scaled to the dwelling, HOA where it applies, and mortgage insurance shown separately — so you see the payment with it and without it.
The income it demands
Run the lender's arithmetic backwards. A payment implies a minimum salary at the 28% front-end ratio, a looser one at FHA's 31%, and a stretched one at 36% back-end. Add a job title and the tool compares that demand against what the role typically pays locally.
The equity underneath
Where the home's value likely went, on the FHFA path for that state, against the amortising loan balance — split into what appreciation gave and what the payments bought, plus the two dates when mortgage insurance can and must come off.
Start from a state
Effective property tax, average premiums, median price and the income a median home demands — worked out for all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
What this tool does and doesn't do
Can you really tell what someone earns from their address?
No — and this tool does not claim to. What an address can tell you, with real precision, is what it costs: the mortgage payment at the rate available on the closing date, the property tax at the local effective rate, the insurance premium typical for the state, and the mortgage insurance implied by the down payment. From there the arithmetic runs the other way. Lenders cap housing at roughly 28% of gross income, so a known payment implies a minimum income. That number is about the house. It is not a lookup of any person's pay.
Where does the salary estimate come from, then?
Only from the optional job title. It maps the title to the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage percentiles for that occupation, moves along the percentile curve according to years of experience, and adjusts to local pay levels using the Bureau of Economic Analysis price parity for the metro area. It describes the role in that market — nothing about the individual living at the address.
How accurate is the monthly payment?
Principal and interest is exact arithmetic once the loan, rate and term are set, and the rate comes from the Freddie Mac survey average for the month of closing. Property tax uses the state effective rate, which is close in most places and off in counties sitting well above or below their state average. Insurance is the widest band. Expect the total within about 10% of reality when the down payment is right, and further off when it is guessed.
What if I don't know the down payment?
The default is 20%, because that is where private mortgage insurance disappears and it is the standard modelling assumption. If the real figure was smaller, the payment was meaningfully higher — open Adjust the assumptions and try 3.5%, 5% or 10%. On most homes the gap between 3.5% and 20% down is several hundred dollars a month.
Why show the payment both with and without PMI?
Because mortgage insurance is temporary on conventional loans and permanent on most FHA loans, and people routinely forget which they have. The pair shows what is being paid now and what the payment becomes the month it falls off. The card also gives the two dates that matter: the 80% loan-to-value point where cancellation can be requested, and the 78% point where federal law requires the servicer to drop it automatically.
Do you store the addresses people enter?
No. Every calculation runs in the browser. Nothing is sent to a server, nothing is logged, and no address ever leaves the device. The shareable link in the address bar is built locally and only exists if you copy it.