When I started selling real estate, my fellow agents gave me a number of Excel spreadsheets to calculate closing costs and monthly payments. As much as I appreciated the gesture, I’m a pen-and-paper person, so I never really used them.

Pen-and-paper served me well for my first few transactionsuntilI ran across a particular customer who was just too impatient to wait five minutes for an estimate of her closing costs and monthly payments. So as much as I dreaded the prospect of lugging a laptop all over creation, that moment I knew it was time to go electronic!

So, I went back to those spreadsheets the other agents gave me. As expected, they didn’t quite jibe with the HUDs from prior transactions… time to bring them up-to-date!

To get the spreadsheets where they could correctly figure closing costs, taxes, homeowner’s insurance, principal and interest, PMI, MIP, and total monthly payments, I had to review my closed files to get a good ball-park average of what vendors and title companies were charging—also had to get per-municipality millages to correctly figure property taxes. Finally, a spreadsheet accurate enough to use in practice!

After using it a while, I got to thinking: “Wouldn’t it be cool if this could be done over the internet without any special software (Excel) where everyone could use it?”, so I put my old computer skills to work to craft a more accurate mortgage calculator for Mobile and Baldwin Counties.

Here it is: http://www.housinghangout.com/mortgage/

Just a few of the things it calculates:

  • Closing Costs
  • PMI Estimate(if necessary)
  • Homeowner’s Insurance Estimate
  • Actual Taxes (based on selected municipality)
  • Actual Principal and Interest (P&I)
  • FHA and VA fees (if applicable)
  • Total Monthly Payment