PlinthHome Lending
Talk to someone

Day one · What price can I defend, and what stops me?

Affordability

Two different things can stop you, and they want opposite responses. This page works out the price your numbers support and then names which of the two — the income test or the cash — is the one actually holding you.

Every figure this page produces is illustrative. The rate you type is an assumption, not an offer; nothing here is a quote, an application or a commitment to lend. The assumptions in force are printed at the bottom of the page.

What you are working from

Before tax, and only income a lender can document and expect to continue.

Card minimums, car and student loans, child support. Not utilities, groceries or insurance premiums you pay outside escrow.

A ceiling you are testing, not a rule. Real limits vary by programme, by automated underwriting and by compensating factors.

Only the part going to the down payment. Closing costs and reserves are real money and are not modelled here.

You type this. It is a number you are testing, not one Plinth is offering.

A percentage of the price, set by your county. It scales with the house, which is why it changes the answer.

Charged above 80% loan-to-value on this page. PMI is priced by the insurer against your credit and your loan-to-value.

3.5% is the FHA floor with qualifying credit; 3% and 5% are common conventional floors; VA and USDA can be nothing down.

Recalculates as you type. There is no submit button and nothing is sent.

Price supported Illustrative

$0

A $0 loan with $0 down, a total monthly housing cost of $0 against a ceiling of $0 once your other debts are taken off.

What is actually stopping youIllustrative

—

—

The payment at that price

Principal & interest
$0
Property tax
$0
Insurance and HOA
$0
Mortgage insurance
$0
Total monthly housing cost
$0

—

Price supported across a range of debt-to-income ceilings

The rising line is what the income test allows at each ceiling. The flat line is the hard stop your cash puts on the price. Wherever the flat line is lower, no ceiling in the world helps — the deposit is the constraint. All figures illustrative.

Price supported across a range of debt-to-income ceilings
Show these numbers as a table

What the payment is made of, either side of that price

The stacked bars are the monthly cost at prices around the one supported; the dashed line is your ceiling. The marked column is the answer above. Mortgage insurance disappears from the stack once the down payment clears 20% of the price.

What the payment is made of, either side of that price
Show these numbers as a table

The assumptions in force

  • 43% is a reference point, not a universal rule. It is the general qualified-mortgage threshold most people have heard of, and it is not the limit every loan is written to. Automated underwriting routinely approves higher ratios with compensating factors — reserves, a long stable job history, a large down payment, credit well above the minimum — and some programmes and manual underwrites sit lower. Ask what ceiling your file is actually being measured against.
  • This is the back-end ratio. All monthly debt, housing included, over gross monthly income. Some programmes also apply a front-end ratio on the housing payment alone, which this page does not model.
  • Only two constraints are modelled. Income against a ceiling, and cash against a minimum down payment. Credit score, reserves, employment history, appraisal, the loan limit in your county and the property itself all decide real approvals and none of them are here.
  • Closing costs are not in the cash figure. They are real, they vary by state and lender, and guessing them here would be inventing a number. Reserves — money a lender wants to see left over after closing — are not modelled either.
  • Taxes and insurance are assumptions that scale. Property tax is a percentage of price, so it moves with the answer; insurance and HOA are fixed monthly figures you supply.
  • Nothing here is a quote, an offer, a pre-approval or a commitment to lend. A price this page supports is not a price a lender has agreed to.

No obligation, and no transmission

Ask a person about this

A broker needs six things to say anything useful. This form asks for exactly those and nothing else — no date of birth, no Social Security number, no credit pull.

This form does not send anything. It validates what you type and then stops. Nothing is stored, nothing is transmitted, no cookie is set and nobody will call you. The demonstration is the point — on a real build one function call inLeadForm.astro would hand this to a CRM.

(816) 555-0147