There are a variety of tools online that you can use to determine how much you can afford to pay for a home, how much the monthly payment will be based on the sale price of a home, and calculators to tell you whether it is better to rent or buy based on your personal situation. Using a home mortgage calculator online doesn't cost any money, and can be an extremely useful tool in your preparation and research for buying a home. Most calculators will have a form for you to fill out, and the most simple of them will ask you to input the principal price of the home, the interest rate, and the number of years that you will have the mortgage for, in order to determine what your monthly payment will be.

A home mortgage calculator online can also be used for determining the monthly payment of other purchases if you'd like, such as car loans, or any other loan that have fixed monthly payments over a determined amount of years using simple interest amortization schedules. Simply enter the price of the item in the principal textbox of the form, the interest rate and the length of years you will be paying on the loan, and click the calculate button to find out what the monthly payment amount, including interest, would be.

You can also take the analysis a step further, and use the other available calculators online to determine if you will be able to afford the monthly amount that you had the form calculate for you. You'll need a little more information to determine whether or not you can financially afford to purchase the home based on the monthly payment, such as the approximate amount of the yearly taxes, and the total of your other monthly payments. The calculators that analyze whether or not you can afford the home will calculate how much your salary should be based on the information you've entered.