mortgage calculators online?

Are they accurate? I googled this to try to figure out a realistic budget of what we can afford but it seems quite high?

If this is not the best way of doing this--- how else did you figure out how much your monthly payment were going to be? Is there a way to figure it out generally?

Thanks ladies!

DH uses the one on MSLI all the time. I have no idea if its accurate but it seems to be. I think the best thing would be know what your interest rate would be because that would change the mortage by alot if its higher/lower.
Once we found out our's we put that amount in the calculator, along with our money down.

I think this is the one I used when we were looking:

http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/mortgages/mortgage-calculator.aspx

But any of them will really work - there's ones that include taxes also if you're buying a house so you can figure out how much that ties into your payment.

They're pretty accurate - you just have to make sure you put in the amount that you will take a mortgage out on - NOT including the down payment, since that will be cash down. Also, make sure your interest rate is around how much you would expect. Interest rate is dependent on what's currently in the market (you can find that out easily), and then if you both have great credit scores, etc., it will probably be near it.

Before you start the hunt, I would also get a pre-approval from a bank/lendor to see how much they would consider you for also, before you go too deep into the search.

To figure out how much we could afford - this is what we did:

- Estimated our monthly expenses --- food, going out, general shopping (clothes, etc.)
- Estimated how much we wanted to save per month aside from all expenses
- Added those two numbers up subtracted from our monthly wages that we get after taxes, and got a rough number of how much we could spend.

THEN, we took that number and assumed that one of us could at any point lose our job, so we then decreased that number to the amount that if anything happened to either of our jobs, one of us would still be able to afford the mortgage.

Are you looking to buy a house, condo or co-op? Depending on this, that will also affect what your budget is.

Things to factor in

Principle and Interest
Escrow is all below
MIP (FHA Loans over 80% LTVR)
Taxes – City and School
Insurance – Home & maybe hazard depends where you live
Those are the main ones.

So our break down
P&I: 1776
Escrow: 901
Total: 2678

Best of Luck