Twelve houses, twelve different problems
Each card below opens the calculator with the numbers already filled in, so you can see the full working rather than take a claim on trust. None of these is a real person's home. They are ordinary purchases in ordinary markets, picked because each one breaks a different assumption people make about what a house costs.
The zero down payment that costs less
A $420,000 house bought in September 2022 with a VA loan and nothing down. It costs $3,069 a month and needs $131,532 of income. The same house on an FHA loan, with $14,700 put down, costs $3,255 — VA loans carry no mortgage insurance, and FHA charges $287 a month for the life of the loan.
Open in the calculator →The 2.74% that can't be replaced
Bought for $450,000 in January 2021, at the lowest mortgage rate ever recorded. It costs $1,871 a month and needs $80,170 of income. The same house today, at today's price and today's rate, needs $165,592.
Open in the calculator →The tax bill that outgrew the mortgage
A $620,000 house bought in September 2020. Principal and interest is $2,062 a month and will never change. Property tax has climbed to $1,705 — and unlike the mortgage, it never amortises away.
Open in the calculator →When insurance passes the tax bill
A $340,000 Florida house bought in April 2021. Homeowners insurance now runs $282 a month against $259 of property tax. Insurance is the larger line — something true in almost no other state.
Open in the calculator →The mortgage insurance that never ends
An FHA purchase at 3.5% down in August 2021. The $256 a month of mortgage insurance does not fall off at 20% equity, or at 30%. On a 30-year FHA loan under 10% down it lasts the entire term. The only exit is refinancing.
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 — and a neighbour buying the identical house today would be assessed at full market price.
Open in the calculator →Bought at the rate peak
$235,000 in October 2023, when 30-year rates hit 7.62% — the highest in over twenty years. Principal and interest is $1,496 a month on a house most of the country would call cheap.
Open in the calculator →When the HOA is the biggest line
A $520,000 condo from June 2021. The association fee runs an estimated $553 a month — more than the property tax and insurance put together, and it never amortises, never drops off, and generally only goes up.
Open in the calculator →The lowest tax rate in America
Hawaii taxes property at 0.29% of value, the lowest rate in the country. On this house that is still $349 a month — more than a Cleveland owner pays on a home worth a fifth as much. Rate and price only mean something together.
Open in the calculator →The refinance that raised the payment
Bought in 2018, refinanced in March 2021 into a 15-year at 2.37%. The rate fell by more than two points and the monthly payment went up $317 — because the payoff was compressed from 30 years into 15.
Open in the calculator →Bought at the very top
$610,000 in May 2022, the month Austin peaked. Four years of payments later, almost all of the equity is principal the owner paid in rather than appreciation the market handed over.
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 over the same period.
Open in the calculator →The PMI nobody cancelled
A $250,000 condo bought with 5% down in June 2020. Market appreciation pushed it past 20% equity within sixteen months — but automatic cancellation is not until 2028.
Open in the calculator →Why these particular twelve
A mortgage payment has four moving parts and most people only think about one. These examples each isolate a different part: the rate you locked, the tax rate of the state you bought in, the insurance market you happen to sit in, the mortgage insurance your down payment triggered, and the association fee nobody counts until the first statement arrives.
Two of them are about time rather than geography. The Boise house shows what a 2021 interest rate is worth in 2026 — the same building, the same street, and roughly double the income needed. The Austin house shows the opposite: buying at a peak means the equity comes from the payments you made, not from the market.