Mortgage Tools
These days there are a ton of free mortgage tools at our fingertips thanks to our friend, the Internet. Online you’ll find an array of useful items such as mortgage calculators, valuation engines, mortgage leads, and much more.
I’ve created a few mortgage calculators and a credit card management calculator myself using Microsoft Excel. They help me control my finances and allow me to gauge what I can afford in the future.
Here is a link to a mortgage amortization calculator that is useful, simple, and spam free:
http://ray.met.fsu.edu/~bret/amortize.html
It allows you see your payment schedule for the life of your loan, whether it’s for 15 years, 30 years, and so on.
A really useful mortgage tool is the home valuation tool from Zillow.com which allows you to look up vital statistics for most any property in the United States. It will show a quick estimated value of the property, a transaction history, and value changes over time. While it’s not 100% accurate, it’s a fun tool to play around with.
Domania.com has a few useful mortgage tools, including a property tax calculator.
SmartMoney.com has some nifty mortgage tools on their website, including a Points vs. No Points Calculator. Basically it allows you to decide whether buying your interest rate down makes sense. I think it’s pretty helpful, although not that complex.
They also have a house affordability tool. This mortgage tool determines how big of a purchase you can make after calculating your monthly income, liabilities, and proposed interest rate, taxes, and insurance.
If you’re not sure whether you should a buy a place, check out their Rent vs Buy mortgage tool, which compares the costs of renting versus owning a home.
Or just stick with my mortgage help site for all the latest news and advice.
Look out for more helpful mortgage tools in the future as they are released.
