First-Time Home Buyer HQ – Affordability & Cost Calculator

Interactive dashboard & Excel for first-time buyers: what you can afford, your true monthly payment, closing costs & cash to close. Instant download.

🏡 Buying your first home, minus the guesswork.

Between affordability, down payments, mortgage rates, PMI and closing costs, buying your first home can feel like a math test no one prepared you for. The First Time Home Buyer HQ turns all of it into one clean, color-coded toolkit that answers the four questions that keep first-time buyers up at night — How much can I afford? What's my real monthly payment? How much cash do I need? Am I saving fast enough?

Just type in your numbers — the dashboard, payment breakdown, closing costs and charts update themselves. That's it.

✅ WHAT IT DOES FOR YOU

• Know what you can truly afford. The Affordability calculator uses the lender 28/36 rule to turn your income and debts into a comfortable payment and price range.

• See your real monthly payment. The Payment Estimator breaks down full PITI — principal, interest, property taxes, homeowners' insurance, PMI and HOA — not just the "principal & interest" number lenders advertise.

• No closing-cost surprises. Estimate every fee line by line, then add up your true cash-to-close: down payment + closing + moving + reserves.

• Save for the right number. The Down-Payment Savings Tracker sets your goal and shows your progress month by month, with a bar that fills as you go.

• Compare homes with your head. The House-Hunting Scorecard weights and ranks up to 6 homes on what matters to you.

• Stay on track. A step-by-step Buying Roadmap, a mortgage Document Checklist and a Life-After-Buying Budget take you from pre-approval to keys.

📚 WHAT'S INCLUDED

12 tabs Start Here guide · Interactive Dashboard · Setup · Affordability · Payment Estimator (PITI) · Closing Costs · Cash to Close · Down-Payment Savings Tracker · House Hunting Scorecard · Buying Roadmap · Mortgage Document Checklist · New-Home Budget — plus a separate interactive HTML dashboard you can use in any browser, even offline.

BEST MADE FOR

✓ US first-time home buyers & couples

✓ Renters saving toward their first home

✓ Anyone house-hunting who wants real numbers

✓ People who want to avoid closing-cost surprises

🖥 WORKS WITH

Google Sheets (free) and Microsoft Excel. Fully fillable, all formulas built in. Color coded so you always know which cells to type in.

⚡ INSTANT DIGITAL DOWNLOAD

Get it immediately after purchase. No physical item is shipped. Make your own copy and use it through your whole home search.

⚠ Educational planning tool — not mortgage, tax, legal or financial advice. Figures are simplified estimates that use assumptions you enter; rates and rules change. Always confirm with a licensed loan officer, tax professional and real-estate attorney.