Ask what a mortgage costs and you’ll usually get the principal-and-interest number — the one that makes the listing look affordable. Then the first escrow statement arrives and the real payment is hundreds of dollars higher.
Our new mortgage calculator is built around that gap. Enter the home price, down payment, rate, and term, and it computes principal and interest with the standard amortization formula — then adds your annual property tax and homeowners insurance, divided into monthly slices, exactly the way an escrow account collects them.
What you get:
- The real monthly total — P&I plus taxes and insurance, side by side, so nothing hides.
- Total interest over the term — the number that makes rate shopping feel worthwhile.
- Instant and shareable — results update as you type, and your inputs live in the URL, so you can send a pre-filled scenario to a partner or an agent in one link.
- Private — everything runs in your browser.
If you write about housing or lending, the calculator is also embeddable on your own site with a single iframe.