Mortgage calculator app icon — PITI payment, PMI and refinance break-even for US buyers

Mortgage calculator with PITI, PMI and refinance break-even

The payment your lender quotes is rarely the payment you make. This one adds the property tax, the insurance, the HOA dues and the mortgage insurance, and shows the whole figure.

▶ Google Play  App Store

Principal and interest is only half the payment

Type a price and a rate into most calculators and you get principal and interest — a number that can be several hundred dollars short of what leaves your account each month. Property tax is missing, home insurance is missing, HOA dues are missing, and if your down payment is under twenty per cent, private mortgage insurance is missing too. The result feels affordable right up to the point where it is not.

This app starts from the full picture. It calculates PITI, adds PMI or the FHA mortgage insurance premium where the loan type requires it, and shows the breakdown line by line so you can see what each component contributes.

What the mortgage calculator covers

Four screens: the payment itself, a refinance analysis, an affordability check, and the settings that support them.

Why this one and not a lender's site

Calculators on lender and broker sites exist to capture a lead. You get a number and then a form. This app has no form, no email capture and no rate table pushing you toward one product — it is a calculator that ends with a calculation.

It also runs offline. The maths, the amortisation schedule and the closing-cost estimates are all computed on the device, so you can use it standing in an open house with no signal. Nothing about the property, the price or your income is uploaded.

Who it is for

First-time buyers get the most out of it, because the gap between the advertised payment and the real one is exactly what catches first-time buyers out. Working backwards from a payment you are comfortable with — rather than forwards from a price a listing suggests — tends to produce a more honest budget.

It is equally useful to existing owners deciding whether a refinance is worth it. Rates move, and the only question that matters is how many months you need to stay in the house for the closing costs to be recovered; that is a single number, and the refinance screen produces it. And for anyone comparing an FHA loan against a conventional one with a larger down payment, the two monthly figures side by side make the trade-off concrete.

Accuracy and privacy

The app is an estimator. Property tax and insurance defaults vary by state and are starting points to be replaced with your own figures; PMI and MIP are modelled from standard rules, and your lender's actual quote is the authority. Nothing here is a loan offer or financial advice.

There is no account, no data upload and no lead capture. It is free and ad-supported.

▶ Google Play  App Store

Frequently asked questions

Does it include PMI and property tax? Yes. The monthly figure covers principal and interest, property tax, home insurance and HOA dues, with PMI or FHA MIP added where the loan type and down payment call for it.

Can it work out whether refinancing is worth it? Yes. The Refinance screen takes your current balance, rate and years remaining against a new rate and closing costs, and returns the month the refinance pays for itself. Cash-out is an optional input.

What loan types are supported? Conventional, FHA, VA and USDA — each with its own mortgage-insurance treatment rather than one generic loan.

Does it work without an internet connection? Yes, entirely. Every calculation runs on the device.

Is it available on iPhone? Yes — it is on both the App Store and Google Play.