United States · Houston, TX
What can you actually afford?
Two ceilings, computed side by side: what a lender would approve, and what the monthly payment you are comfortable with actually buys once the costs of owning are paid. Both are shown, and whichever one binds is named.
Almost every affordability calculator returns a single number, and it is the lender's. That number answers what a bank is willing to risk. It does not answer what your month looks like afterwards.
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Two ceilings, not one
Both come out of the same inputs and are shown together, because the distance between them is the part of the decision nobody is handed.
What a lender approves
Gross income against front-end and back-end debt-to-income ratios, qualified at the rate you were actually offered — no federal rate buffer applies. This is what a pre-approval measures: the risk the lender is willing to take.
What your monthly budget carries
The monthly all-in figure you say you would be relaxed about, minus property tax, insurance, HOA fees, utilities and a maintenance reserve. Whatever survives that subtraction is what a mortgage payment comes out of, every month, for decades. You set that figure — nothing here infers it from your income.
Which one binds
The headline price is what your monthly budget carries; the lender's qualified maximum sits beside it. Knowing which of the two binds — and what one more dollar of monthly debt costs you in purchase price — is more useful than the headline figure.
Texas rules, not national averages
Houston (Harris County) is modelled with its own property tax rate, homestead exemption and closing-cost conventions — not a single national number standing in for every state.
- Homestead exemption
- Harris County's school-district homestead exemption shields $140,000 of a primary residence's value from the HISD portion of the property tax bill (as of 2025-11-04).
- No transfer tax
- Texas charges no state real estate transfer tax on a home sale. Closing costs run through title insurance and county recording fees instead.
- Mortgage insurance
- Below 20% down, a buyer pays private mortgage insurance monthly rather than a one-time premium financed into the loan — cancellable once equity clears the threshold.
Which is why the answer depends on the market you buy in, and why a single national figure would be wrong the moment you cross a state line.
Where the figures come from, stated plainly: each jurisdiction figure carries a sourcing record naming the document it was checked against and that document's date. Most are read off the issuing authority's own schedule; some are defaults we chose and disclose, because legal fees and moving costs have no authoritative publisher; a few are left empty because nobody publishes them at all. Sources and provenance lists every one, figure by figure.
What each tool answers
Every tool runs on the same engine and the same inputs, so a number you enter once follows you across all of them. Nothing is gated behind anything else — start wherever your question is.
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Questions this answers
- How much house can I afford in the US?
- It depends which ceiling binds. Give the affordability tool your income, your city and your down payment and it computes both — the maximum a lender would qualify you for, and the price the monthly payment you are comfortable with carries after ownership costs — then names whichever one binds.
- Why is my pre-approval higher than what I can afford?
- A pre-approval tests gross income against front-end and back-end debt-to-income ratio limits. It does not subtract the property tax, homeowners insurance, HOA fees, utilities and maintenance that arrive with the house, and it takes no view on what you want the rest of your month to contain. The gap between the two figures runs to several hundred dollars a month.
- Does the US have a mortgage stress test like Canada's?
- No federal stress test applies to a US mortgage — you qualify against your actual contract rate, not a higher regulatory floor. Lenders instead cap your debt-to-income ratio, and a loan above 80% loan-to-value usually carries private mortgage insurance (PMI) until your equity clears the threshold to cancel it.
- Does this work outside Houston, Texas?
- Right now, Houston (Harris County), Texas is the only US market modelled — its own property tax rate, homestead exemption and closing-cost conventions, not a national average. Harris County's school-district homestead exemption shields $140,000 of a primary residence's value (as of 2025-11-04), and Texas charges no state real estate transfer tax at all; other states that do are not modelled yet.
- Can I buy a home in the US if I am not a citizen?
- This tool does not model any federal citizenship or immigration restriction on buying US residential property — that is a different question from the one Canada's federal Act raises, and confirming your own situation is outside what this calculator does. Financing as a non-citizen is a separate question with its own lender-specific answer.
- Are the numbers verified?
- Most of them, and every figure says which. Each one carries a sourcing record: the document it was checked against, that document's date, and how far it can be trusted. Most were read off the issuing authority's own schedule — the IRS, FHFA, Freddie Mac's PMMS, the Texas Department of Insurance, Harris County's own taxing entities. Others are modelling defaults we chose and disclose, because closing fees and moving costs have no authoritative publisher. A few are left empty because nobody publishes them at all, and the app asks you for those rather than inventing one. The sources page lists every figure with its document and date. Confirm anything you are about to act on.