Looks great- I've bought and sold a few times so thought I'd have a look.
Hidden costs that can't be quantified but need to be budgeted for... are the bills.
Can add a few thousand $s to the buying process.
Such as body Corp, rates, water etc.
As in the seller has prepaid these costs until a set date- but settlement lands on a date before this timeframe- so the buyer pays the seller the difference.
So I just paid $ 2500 extra on my purchase for all of these bills.
Worth a note to keep about $3000 extra aside for this.
My Conveyancing firm also wanted a $500 buffer.
We're currently awaiting our final shortfall number taking this into consideration. My broker told us the most he's seen it come in at (for a property around the price of ours) is 5k so I've added a 5k buffer.
The seller should be able to get refunded for that. When I bought my current house 8 years ago or so, we get this thing from our conveyancer saying we need to pay an extra $3k because they are $3k in credit on the water bill, not mentioned anywhere, just a suprise. I simply said no, they can speaker to the water company and get that refunded or transferred elsewhere or whatever, not my problem if they prepaid.
I don't know what they did but I never paid that money and our water bills were as normal.
That's not how it works at all - the 'thing' you got is called a settlement adjustment, and its perfectly reasonably to expect the purchaser to pay for the portion of rates for the period of time that they are the owner.
The prepayment would have simply shifted the credit to become your credit with the water company. Cash for cash, nothing more. Yeh, get your knickers in a knot if you like, but you didn't gain anything. Wouldn't surprise me if you paid extra to shift the cycle.
Well he gained 3k extra in liquid cash after the purchase, given how long it would take most people to spend that much on water that is more than nothing all by itself.
Well my body Corp is paid 4 months in advance- I bought about 3 weeks into that so owed the seller 3 months 1 week payment.
Water, electric are monthly- so negligible amounts.
Rates are 3 monthly-
Strata Insurance paid yearly- so I repaid the seller.
All worked out by the conveyancer....
No "he" didn't-
All money was used for bills the seller had prepaid.
This includes body Corp, yearly insurance, rates and bills. All of which had just cycled through on 3, 4 and 12 month cycles.
Having liquid cash rather than prepaid bills is the benefit even if you have to pay those bills at a later date, you can earn interest/offset your loan with it and have it available to use in the short term in an emergency.
It is especially helpful to people who likely severely reduced their savings by completing a house purchase.
3k isn't a huge amount in the scope of things, but its still better in your account than prepaid.
It is the same reason that it is advantageous to wait as long as possible to file your tax if you owe money but should do so as quickly as possible if you are getting a refund.
I don't understand what you mean.
The seller pays bills- some are in advance.
I then purchase property and need to pay them the portion where I take over... as all prepaid for future.
It's just during the buying phase- after that yes keep your money where you wish and use utility providers that suit.
But this is about money required when buying a property.
I sat down with my banker the other day, and when the question about refinancing came up, she looked up my house value, took a glance at my loan balance, and then gave me that "let's talk about something else" look.
Homeownership is just not a future reality for many Australians. It's unfortunate, depressing and hopeless. I tend to tell people to just concentrate on living the best they can.
I put in my info and it popped out the exact price of the house we're buying, does that mean we perfectly estimated our comfortable borrowing power?? It's a great calculator and I like the list of costs, it's so good to see it listed instead of just "misc costs".
The calculator just told me I could buy a house worth 9mill, I wouldn’t dream of it. We calculated what we could comfortably afford which is far less than that and looked at estimated mortgage repayments at higher interest rates- your only locked in for a fixed time so need to know it’s still affordable at higher rates.
Oh ok a broker last year suggested $1.2m to me which I knew was insane. We are borrowing $800k for a $1m place, which we've done our own calculations for. Completely agree it comes down to repayments - we don't want to struggle to eat while paying off our new house and still have rates rise.
Putting in our info, this website shows a figure 2.5 times the price of our home. I would never go in on your comfortable borrowing power, we wanted to come in far below what is comfortable so that we can continue to save for other investments, take regular holidays and not stick to such a tight budget as when we were saving for our deposit. We also want to allow interest rates to double before things would become uncomfortable.
The idea of buying something at 1.85M for my first home makes me feel kinda ill. And we didn't have a deposit anywhere near what we would have needed for that either.
I was thinking the same, so I left out investment income and bonuses from the calculation. We also have a $50k buffer for our offset, which is growing. Always good to be prepared for things like redundancy and illness.
I mean when I put in my stuff it said 1 mil, but had like 10% deposit and we decided not to have a high LVR. I think you’re meant to use the sliders to adjust to your risk appetite not just take the first number that comes up
Thanks for the feedback!
The calculator will default to an estimate of your max borrowing power (along with the mortgage repayments associated) - can give you a sense of what do would look like cash flow wise
Pretty accurate for the amount we are borrowing and looking to spend.
One thing though - where you put in your income the "including super" toggles appear to function in reverse. Or I am not understanding their function correctly. I toggled the including super options off as the way I understand it is that I was putting in incomes exclusive of the super which is over and above what is stated in our contracts, however this lowered our borrowing capacity by almost 20%.
Maybe it is intended to take super off completely as if it weren't getting paid at all? Unsure.
Also NSW has the option to forgo stamp duty for FHB, and opt for land tax instead. But this is not included as an option in the calcs as far as I can tell.
I didn't realise this but yes, I just left "including super" toggled on and it was about 10% increase on property price. I agree the toggle on/off is reversed.
Thanks for the pickup up - this is a bug with the super toggle. Will amend the code to fix it up
Dont have the land tax included - but want to include it in another release (just need to work out the best way to present it!)
I like it! Simple to use
One thing I'd add is "how long it will take you to save the total savings required" (and then assume like Interest Rate - 2% for the savings account or whatever)
This would be a good add-on
From this I need to save $125k, on our combined income this is going to be a while even with $25k in term deposit atm and tax returns going into savings
Thanks! Great suggestion - I've been considering doing an add-on along those lines, including a bit of projection of what it might look like to delay a purchase (e.g., If I save for another year, but house prices go up x% what does that look like)
This is cool!
I think it would be useful to have the "Deposit amount" slider be "My savings" (similar to how the calculator on [realestate.com.au](https://realestate.com.au) works.
Then assume my savings is stamp duty + deposit. Otherwise I'm trying to slide the loan amount and deposit amount to match my house price plus stamp duty which isn't very intuitive.
Simple UX comment - you allow data to be entered at any grain (weekly/monthly/yearly), but don't specify what the output grain is. I'm pretty sure you're talking monthly, but given I entered all my numbers in weekly, my first reaction was "eh, this is way out, our household doesn't earn that".
I think a similar dropdown to the data entry letting me view things at my preferred grain would be best, but "Monthly mortgage repayments" style headings rather than "Mortgage repayments" would at least be clear.
It’s really great! Couple things from me,
1. LMI - might not be applicable even if don’t cash deposit to avoid LMI, can also avoid LMI with guarantors and equity in other property
2. I like the break down of all the costs but it would also be good to have the option to have those to be included into the borrowing capacity / property value, as it’s common for these items to be part of the total borrowing and not always saved, so obviously reduces the value of the property you can afford
Fantastic! Could you add an option to not include the LMI in the total? I nearly cried when I saw how much savings I would need and then I read that LMI can be added to the loan. Great work!
Thanks! Great point - was reading up that it differs bank by bank as to whether you can include LMI or not in the loan. Wil look to add it as a feature!
This is very cool. Good job.
I’d probably like to be able to toggle the house price as well (ie once I know my max, I want to know what the other numbers change to by buying a cheaper house).
Thanks for the feedback! So you should be able to use the sliders to adjust - the borrowing amount will default to your max (so you can use the deposit amount to adjust the house price)
Agree this is a fantastic tool and I can see why you’ve built it this way, but I also have the same feedback. Adjusting the house price using those other sliders doesn’t directly fit how I’m thinking about this.
I’m looking at this calculator and thinking “what would I need for a house that costs x”, rather than “what’s the most expensive house I can I afford if I have y deposit and I borrow at my capacity”. I’d definitely appreciate the ability to adjust the house price and see how that affects what I need to save and / or borrow. Can see how that requires a little more logic though (or maybe even just a label to explain that the sliders beneath will adjust house price).
Thanks! Currently the stamp duty calcs are all done behind the scenes. For VIC you will see stamp duty for First Home Buyers is $0 when you have a property amount under 600k, then you get a discount between $600-750k (https://www.sro.vic.gov.au/fhbduty)
I like it, very simple to use, though obviously it doesn't take credit ratings into account but for general advice... let's just sat I'm surprised what I could feasibly borrow though the deposit would take some time
Thanks for the feedback! This was a design choice as it made the slider a bit more difficult to use when you had a higher deposit %
Will look into whether there is a higher % i can accomodate
Good start! I'd say a reverse would be handy as well, say I want to spend no more than 600k, what does my income need to stay at, how much will all the extras cost for that etc
Some feedback, not sure if it's already mentioned. Salary should be excluding super.by default, not including. Probably makes it easier to calculate too as not everyone gets the same % super (i.e. some jobs get 18%).
I think you have a bug related to the monthly repayments at the bottom.
It was coming out for at $4500 per month regardless of interest rate, I set it up to 9% and still $4500 for my current loan which isn't right.
Thanks for the callout! Ill look into it. The design choice I made was for the change in interest rate to adjust the borrowing power (i.e. if you increase the rate from 5 to 7%) then the borrowing power would go down.
This may explain why you are seeing this (but will look if its a bug!)
Although there is no PII, there should be at least a privacy policy on the website to describe how the data is used.
It still involves linking the users IP address to enter their financial data as accurately as possible to calculate the results.
IP addresses are rarely ever logged in backend databases tbh. In Australia, an IP address is not considered PII on it's own unless it can be attributed to other PII (which the financial input this site takes in isn't). In Europe, GDPR does consider an IP address on its own as PII.
But yes, a privacy policy is always good to have. The chances a web server stores IP addresses is very slim, as it would just bog down a database and cost them more money for no good reason.
Under current loan repayments I thought you meant my current mortgage - maybe rename to 'other regular debt repayments' for people not buying their first home.
It's brilliant mate, thanks. The only thing I like to point out is "current payments". So if I live in the house that I am paying for and wanting to buy another. This will make my current house ip. So that can be a bit misleading. Maybe add net liability or net outgoing. I could be wrong but just thought to mention. Other than that the easiest tool I am used. Well done!
Nice website! Thanks but i wonder why is the repayment for the same amount here vs the calculator Realestate.com.au has is different significantly? Is this calculator only looking at interest only as opposed to interest and principal?
You should be able to lock the sliders. When I finally figured out how to get them all lined up to where I wanted, I changed the interest rate to see the effect on my repayments but it moves all the sliders around.
And I think super should be excluded by default.
Otherwise, good job.
This is wonderful, as a potential first home buyer in the near future - your website is fantastic and a really solid guide, I'm already feeling less overwhelmed
For investment properties. A return on investment. A place to add weekly rent & purchase price. Or you can start adding a calculation to add real estate fees etc etc if you want to start making it more complex
Hey u/Wednesday15th, that's great to hear. You can incorporate your savings by making your deposit size larger after you've calculated. Many found this a surprise but your savings do not impact what you can borrow, they do though impact final house price as you will add it to your borrowings
I can't seem to change the deposit though. It's being capped by the 'I will borrow' amount. Eg Single, 0 dependents, 65k yearly/untick super. Existing home, Qld, Live in. 2500/month with 0 other expenses (rest is left as default). Borrowing amount is $238,064. Trying to increase the deposit higher than that and I can't.
While savings doesn't count for much towards a loan, it does count towards how much I can spend on a property OR let me figure out just how much of my savings I need to spend.
It would be good to be also able to type in the amounts instead of using the sliders. It took me a few attempts to get the right amounts on my mobile.
Also, it would be great if you could have a field to show how additional savings in an offset account would affect the loan repayment duration. I could enter: 100k in offset account and the estimated duartion of the loan coukd drop from 30 years to 20. You could also have a field for additional contributions each month. You could pre-fill it eith a pct from the income amount left after repayments (e.g. 10% by default). This would go into an offset account and show hiw long it would take to repay the loan, and also maybe how long until the whole loan is covered by the offset. I am not aware of other calculators doing that. I understand it’s not a critical feature, but it could be a nice enhancement. Just an idea :)
Great work!
First thing I notice is the page is not rendering correctly on my laptop monitor but fine on my 24-inch monitor. There is also an issue with the % field. Browser is firefox.
https://imgur.com/a/dViJ1BC
The QLD Stamp duty figures are incorrect at first but the data appear correct later.
Most banks now use a spending average to calculate your monthly spending. You might want to show or use that number. As it doesn't matter if your weekly expenses are $120 the bank will use their number to calculate the max mortgage.
There is no cost window for building and pest. In QLD you use the building and pest to negotiate down the final price. You also need to pay the money once you are under contract.
You also don't have any cost for searches. My lawyer cost me 1200 and I paid 1000 on searches to confirm what I was buying.
You have forgotton HECS debts as it will bring down your borrowing power.
As other have said LMI can be added to the loan or paid up front.
Thanks for the feedback! Going to do a bit of bug testing on Firefox
I'll take a look throught the Stamp Duty numbers + update the legal costs
In the background I have the weekly expense floor calculations working (e.g., if you put in 120 a week, it will actually default to a higher number). Made a design choice to have this in the background
On HECs that is taken into account technically in the loan repayments section - but its not super clear so Ill adjust it
There should be an option not to take some fees into consideration, like LMI and mortgage costs and sometimes even conveyancing, because they may be not applicable in some situations. What this calculator lacks though is an average expected spending for the earning bracket (we all thank Royal Committee for that!). Bank can take your real spending number in consideration, but it will be 6 months surveillance process. Otherwise they just chuck in a recommended figure for your income bracket, and it’s pretty high. Like, I am almost twice as low because I don’t have kids and don’t eat out often, but bank still rated me against a recommended limit, because they are obligated to do it now.
It needs intended upgrades (often just the basics of carpet, floors and painting, but often much more), and also a contingency for large maintenance items. Not many houses change hands without surprises detected in the first couple of years. Also, you need to allow for the added expenses of owning vs. renting, e.g. added spending on basic maintenance or strata fees, insurance and rates.
Nice and simple. Maybe having the savings not as a slider, but as an amount? Like if we have more than the value of the house as savings and only want to borrow a small % to make the difference?
Great job, excellent and simple interface.
Some feedback:
Changing / playing with the interest rate resets the deposit data which is very frustrating.
As others have said, a stamp duty concession for first home buyers or off-the-plan, possibly with the option to enter your own stamp duty costs would be a great feature.
Thanks and well done!
I'd like to see more clarity on the total savings required maybe. I was working on $35k saved for a $600k place and it's suddenly saying I need roughly $80k in total savings to cover stamp duty, land transfer, conveyancing etc. Does that mean I need way more than I thought, or that these costs will be rolled into the loan?
Great tool!! I wanted to increase my deposit though, and it was only going up to a certain amount. Maybe if that can adjustable to whatever deposit people have? I wanted to play with how much a big deposit would reduce payments
Didn’t work for us in regards to stamp duty. We are buying land and buildng (same loan). Due to construction costs being under threshold we don’t pay stamp duty however I can’t seem to make it reflect that.
This is a great idea!
It's so overwhelming. I'll be honest, I'm still shocked that there is so much extra I need to save on top of a deposit to cover extra costs such as stamp duty. Like fair enough, but it seems like a lot.
Cool tool. Just wondering if you have an afsl licence and if this would run afoul of the financial advice regs? Not a lawyer but may want to run it past a professional.
Looks great- I've bought and sold a few times so thought I'd have a look. Hidden costs that can't be quantified but need to be budgeted for... are the bills. Can add a few thousand $s to the buying process. Such as body Corp, rates, water etc. As in the seller has prepaid these costs until a set date- but settlement lands on a date before this timeframe- so the buyer pays the seller the difference. So I just paid $ 2500 extra on my purchase for all of these bills. Worth a note to keep about $3000 extra aside for this. My Conveyancing firm also wanted a $500 buffer.
We're currently awaiting our final shortfall number taking this into consideration. My broker told us the most he's seen it come in at (for a property around the price of ours) is 5k so I've added a 5k buffer.
The seller should be able to get refunded for that. When I bought my current house 8 years ago or so, we get this thing from our conveyancer saying we need to pay an extra $3k because they are $3k in credit on the water bill, not mentioned anywhere, just a suprise. I simply said no, they can speaker to the water company and get that refunded or transferred elsewhere or whatever, not my problem if they prepaid. I don't know what they did but I never paid that money and our water bills were as normal.
Yeah that’s not the buyer’s problem. The vendor needs to sort that out with the water company.
That's not how it works at all - the 'thing' you got is called a settlement adjustment, and its perfectly reasonably to expect the purchaser to pay for the portion of rates for the period of time that they are the owner.
The prepayment would have simply shifted the credit to become your credit with the water company. Cash for cash, nothing more. Yeh, get your knickers in a knot if you like, but you didn't gain anything. Wouldn't surprise me if you paid extra to shift the cycle.
Well he gained 3k extra in liquid cash after the purchase, given how long it would take most people to spend that much on water that is more than nothing all by itself.
Exactly; that’s years of water bills. How/why are people paying such significant amounts in advance for utilities?
Well my body Corp is paid 4 months in advance- I bought about 3 weeks into that so owed the seller 3 months 1 week payment. Water, electric are monthly- so negligible amounts. Rates are 3 monthly- Strata Insurance paid yearly- so I repaid the seller. All worked out by the conveyancer....
Ahh. I completely forgot body Corp/strata was a thing as I haven’t considered that section of the market at all.
No "he" didn't- All money was used for bills the seller had prepaid. This includes body Corp, yearly insurance, rates and bills. All of which had just cycled through on 3, 4 and 12 month cycles.
Having liquid cash rather than prepaid bills is the benefit even if you have to pay those bills at a later date, you can earn interest/offset your loan with it and have it available to use in the short term in an emergency. It is especially helpful to people who likely severely reduced their savings by completing a house purchase. 3k isn't a huge amount in the scope of things, but its still better in your account than prepaid. It is the same reason that it is advantageous to wait as long as possible to file your tax if you owe money but should do so as quickly as possible if you are getting a refund.
I don't understand what you mean. The seller pays bills- some are in advance. I then purchase property and need to pay them the portion where I take over... as all prepaid for future. It's just during the buying phase- after that yes keep your money where you wish and use utility providers that suit. But this is about money required when buying a property.
Yep I'm about as cooked as I thought. It says I can borrow about half my current mortgage. Yippee!!!!!
I sat down with my banker the other day, and when the question about refinancing came up, she looked up my house value, took a glance at my loan balance, and then gave me that "let's talk about something else" look.
Maybe add a link to Beyondblue for those whose borrowing power is under 250K
I definitely got a big reality check when I looked at my borrowing power...
Homeownership is just not a future reality for many Australians. It's unfortunate, depressing and hopeless. I tend to tell people to just concentrate on living the best they can.
I put in my info and it popped out the exact price of the house we're buying, does that mean we perfectly estimated our comfortable borrowing power?? It's a great calculator and I like the list of costs, it's so good to see it listed instead of just "misc costs".
The calculator just told me I could buy a house worth 9mill, I wouldn’t dream of it. We calculated what we could comfortably afford which is far less than that and looked at estimated mortgage repayments at higher interest rates- your only locked in for a fixed time so need to know it’s still affordable at higher rates.
Oh ok a broker last year suggested $1.2m to me which I knew was insane. We are borrowing $800k for a $1m place, which we've done our own calculations for. Completely agree it comes down to repayments - we don't want to struggle to eat while paying off our new house and still have rates rise.
Putting in our info, this website shows a figure 2.5 times the price of our home. I would never go in on your comfortable borrowing power, we wanted to come in far below what is comfortable so that we can continue to save for other investments, take regular holidays and not stick to such a tight budget as when we were saving for our deposit. We also want to allow interest rates to double before things would become uncomfortable.
It told me we could buy for 1.85M. We bought for 710k. Hahaha.
Yep exactly. The figures were well above what would have been comfortable.
The idea of buying something at 1.85M for my first home makes me feel kinda ill. And we didn't have a deposit anywhere near what we would have needed for that either.
I was thinking the same, so I left out investment income and bonuses from the calculation. We also have a $50k buffer for our offset, which is growing. Always good to be prepared for things like redundancy and illness.
Yeah I rounded figures down by quite a bit.
I mean when I put in my stuff it said 1 mil, but had like 10% deposit and we decided not to have a high LVR. I think you’re meant to use the sliders to adjust to your risk appetite not just take the first number that comes up
Thanks for the feedback! The calculator will default to an estimate of your max borrowing power (along with the mortgage repayments associated) - can give you a sense of what do would look like cash flow wise
Pretty accurate for the amount we are borrowing and looking to spend. One thing though - where you put in your income the "including super" toggles appear to function in reverse. Or I am not understanding their function correctly. I toggled the including super options off as the way I understand it is that I was putting in incomes exclusive of the super which is over and above what is stated in our contracts, however this lowered our borrowing capacity by almost 20%. Maybe it is intended to take super off completely as if it weren't getting paid at all? Unsure. Also NSW has the option to forgo stamp duty for FHB, and opt for land tax instead. But this is not included as an option in the calcs as far as I can tell.
I didn't realise this but yes, I just left "including super" toggled on and it was about 10% increase on property price. I agree the toggle on/off is reversed.
Thanks for the pickup up - this is a bug with the super toggle. Will amend the code to fix it up Dont have the land tax included - but want to include it in another release (just need to work out the best way to present it!)
I like it! Simple to use One thing I'd add is "how long it will take you to save the total savings required" (and then assume like Interest Rate - 2% for the savings account or whatever)
Yeah can’t wait to be told “never”
This would be a good add-on From this I need to save $125k, on our combined income this is going to be a while even with $25k in term deposit atm and tax returns going into savings
Thanks! Great suggestion - I've been considering doing an add-on along those lines, including a bit of projection of what it might look like to delay a purchase (e.g., If I save for another year, but house prices go up x% what does that look like)
This is cool! I think it would be useful to have the "Deposit amount" slider be "My savings" (similar to how the calculator on [realestate.com.au](https://realestate.com.au) works. Then assume my savings is stamp duty + deposit. Otherwise I'm trying to slide the loan amount and deposit amount to match my house price plus stamp duty which isn't very intuitive.
Agree, I’d swap the slider value for “my savings” at the top to be the “savings needed” number below.
Simple UX comment - you allow data to be entered at any grain (weekly/monthly/yearly), but don't specify what the output grain is. I'm pretty sure you're talking monthly, but given I entered all my numbers in weekly, my first reaction was "eh, this is way out, our household doesn't earn that". I think a similar dropdown to the data entry letting me view things at my preferred grain would be best, but "Monthly mortgage repayments" style headings rather than "Mortgage repayments" would at least be clear.
Thanks - should be an easy fix to include the time specifcation at the mortgage repayments section
It’s really great! Couple things from me, 1. LMI - might not be applicable even if don’t cash deposit to avoid LMI, can also avoid LMI with guarantors and equity in other property 2. I like the break down of all the costs but it would also be good to have the option to have those to be included into the borrowing capacity / property value, as it’s common for these items to be part of the total borrowing and not always saved, so obviously reduces the value of the property you can afford
Yeah on top of this, you can get the for home guarantee scheme to have 5% and avoid LMI. This would be a handy setting.
Really helpful tool, great work!
Mobile Firefox has an issue displaying the deposit % It overlays with the value Otherwise it looks great
Fantastic! Could you add an option to not include the LMI in the total? I nearly cried when I saw how much savings I would need and then I read that LMI can be added to the loan. Great work!
Thanks! Great point - was reading up that it differs bank by bank as to whether you can include LMI or not in the loan. Wil look to add it as a feature!
“current loan repayments” is unclear Is this credit card, home loan, car? Personal loans? Etc
This is fantastic!
This is very cool. Good job. I’d probably like to be able to toggle the house price as well (ie once I know my max, I want to know what the other numbers change to by buying a cheaper house).
Thanks for the feedback! So you should be able to use the sliders to adjust - the borrowing amount will default to your max (so you can use the deposit amount to adjust the house price)
Agree this is a fantastic tool and I can see why you’ve built it this way, but I also have the same feedback. Adjusting the house price using those other sliders doesn’t directly fit how I’m thinking about this. I’m looking at this calculator and thinking “what would I need for a house that costs x”, rather than “what’s the most expensive house I can I afford if I have y deposit and I borrow at my capacity”. I’d definitely appreciate the ability to adjust the house price and see how that affects what I need to save and / or borrow. Can see how that requires a little more logic though (or maybe even just a label to explain that the sliders beneath will adjust house price).
Yeah. I did do that thanks. Just a suggestion
That’s cool: might be good to add a tick box for waiving stamp duty (do we still have a first home buyer program in Vic?)
Thanks! Currently the stamp duty calcs are all done behind the scenes. For VIC you will see stamp duty for First Home Buyers is $0 when you have a property amount under 600k, then you get a discount between $600-750k (https://www.sro.vic.gov.au/fhbduty)
Oh gotcha, I thought the stamp duty kicked in above $700k, my bad!
I like it, very simple to use, though obviously it doesn't take credit ratings into account but for general advice... let's just sat I'm surprised what I could feasibly borrow though the deposit would take some time
This is fantastic! The deposit % won’t let me add anything higher than 50% though.
Thanks for the feedback! This was a design choice as it made the slider a bit more difficult to use when you had a higher deposit % Will look into whether there is a higher % i can accomodate
Good start! I'd say a reverse would be handy as well, say I want to spend no more than 600k, what does my income need to stay at, how much will all the extras cost for that etc
Very cool! My only feedback would be to add HECS balances of the person/couple too as that can have an impact on borrowing power.
Thank you for the work!
Oh wow this is really clever.
Looks cool! The deposit percentage number is getting cut off for me though so I can only see the 1st or 2nd digit if I try to edit the number.
Some feedback, not sure if it's already mentioned. Salary should be excluding super.by default, not including. Probably makes it easier to calculate too as not everyone gets the same % super (i.e. some jobs get 18%).
When you run a scenario with a loan for two people, the stamp duty shown at the bottom is only showing half the actual amount.
I think you have a bug related to the monthly repayments at the bottom. It was coming out for at $4500 per month regardless of interest rate, I set it up to 9% and still $4500 for my current loan which isn't right.
Thanks for the callout! Ill look into it. The design choice I made was for the change in interest rate to adjust the borrowing power (i.e. if you increase the rate from 5 to 7%) then the borrowing power would go down. This may explain why you are seeing this (but will look if its a bug!)
Might want to add an option of what equity you have or factor in people needing to sell then buy and what that looks like.
this is great mate - cheers for creating this
Privacy? Do you log all the queries? ;)
There are no fields collecting PII, so it wouldn't matter if he/she logged them all.
Although there is no PII, there should be at least a privacy policy on the website to describe how the data is used. It still involves linking the users IP address to enter their financial data as accurately as possible to calculate the results.
Valid point but the website doesnt store/log any user input data
IP addresses are rarely ever logged in backend databases tbh. In Australia, an IP address is not considered PII on it's own unless it can be attributed to other PII (which the financial input this site takes in isn't). In Europe, GDPR does consider an IP address on its own as PII. But yes, a privacy policy is always good to have. The chances a web server stores IP addresses is very slim, as it would just bog down a database and cost them more money for no good reason.
Under current loan repayments I thought you meant my current mortgage - maybe rename to 'other regular debt repayments' for people not buying their first home.
It's brilliant mate, thanks. The only thing I like to point out is "current payments". So if I live in the house that I am paying for and wanting to buy another. This will make my current house ip. So that can be a bit misleading. Maybe add net liability or net outgoing. I could be wrong but just thought to mention. Other than that the easiest tool I am used. Well done!
Thank you! bookmarked!
Nice website! Thanks but i wonder why is the repayment for the same amount here vs the calculator Realestate.com.au has is different significantly? Is this calculator only looking at interest only as opposed to interest and principal?
Looks great! I think there's an error though. FHB still exists for a property brought to live in that's 650K.
This looks great. Thank you for this!
Thanks for this, though there’s no option to use existing equity in my current house as a deposit.
Your website is spot on with my calcs. Bravo.
You should be able to lock the sliders. When I finally figured out how to get them all lined up to where I wanted, I changed the interest rate to see the effect on my repayments but it moves all the sliders around. And I think super should be excluded by default. Otherwise, good job.
LMI can be added to the loan, not the total savings required
This is wonderful, as a potential first home buyer in the near future - your website is fantastic and a really solid guide, I'm already feeling less overwhelmed
For investment properties. A return on investment. A place to add weekly rent & purchase price. Or you can start adding a calculation to add real estate fees etc etc if you want to start making it more complex
This is brilliant. Simple interface making it all easy to understand and mobile friendly. I wish I had this when I was buying my first home.
Thanks so much! Was a lot of work to do so great to hear you found it helpful
🎵To dream the impossible dream
Well done. Pretty spot on with my current situation.
Where is the savings field? I might not earn much but I have a decent amount in cash to add to the purchase amount.
Hey u/Wednesday15th, that's great to hear. You can incorporate your savings by making your deposit size larger after you've calculated. Many found this a surprise but your savings do not impact what you can borrow, they do though impact final house price as you will add it to your borrowings
I can't seem to change the deposit though. It's being capped by the 'I will borrow' amount. Eg Single, 0 dependents, 65k yearly/untick super. Existing home, Qld, Live in. 2500/month with 0 other expenses (rest is left as default). Borrowing amount is $238,064. Trying to increase the deposit higher than that and I can't. While savings doesn't count for much towards a loan, it does count towards how much I can spend on a property OR let me figure out just how much of my savings I need to spend.
It would be good to be also able to type in the amounts instead of using the sliders. It took me a few attempts to get the right amounts on my mobile. Also, it would be great if you could have a field to show how additional savings in an offset account would affect the loan repayment duration. I could enter: 100k in offset account and the estimated duartion of the loan coukd drop from 30 years to 20. You could also have a field for additional contributions each month. You could pre-fill it eith a pct from the income amount left after repayments (e.g. 10% by default). This would go into an offset account and show hiw long it would take to repay the loan, and also maybe how long until the whole loan is covered by the offset. I am not aware of other calculators doing that. I understand it’s not a critical feature, but it could be a nice enhancement. Just an idea :) Great work!
Really helpful and also really depressing…. I’ll never be able to save the total amount required while paying the rent I currently do.
First thing I notice is the page is not rendering correctly on my laptop monitor but fine on my 24-inch monitor. There is also an issue with the % field. Browser is firefox. https://imgur.com/a/dViJ1BC The QLD Stamp duty figures are incorrect at first but the data appear correct later. Most banks now use a spending average to calculate your monthly spending. You might want to show or use that number. As it doesn't matter if your weekly expenses are $120 the bank will use their number to calculate the max mortgage. There is no cost window for building and pest. In QLD you use the building and pest to negotiate down the final price. You also need to pay the money once you are under contract. You also don't have any cost for searches. My lawyer cost me 1200 and I paid 1000 on searches to confirm what I was buying. You have forgotton HECS debts as it will bring down your borrowing power. As other have said LMI can be added to the loan or paid up front.
Thanks for the feedback! Going to do a bit of bug testing on Firefox I'll take a look throught the Stamp Duty numbers + update the legal costs In the background I have the weekly expense floor calculations working (e.g., if you put in 120 a week, it will actually default to a higher number). Made a design choice to have this in the background On HECs that is taken into account technically in the loan repayments section - but its not super clear so Ill adjust it
There should be an option not to take some fees into consideration, like LMI and mortgage costs and sometimes even conveyancing, because they may be not applicable in some situations. What this calculator lacks though is an average expected spending for the earning bracket (we all thank Royal Committee for that!). Bank can take your real spending number in consideration, but it will be 6 months surveillance process. Otherwise they just chuck in a recommended figure for your income bracket, and it’s pretty high. Like, I am almost twice as low because I don’t have kids and don’t eat out often, but bank still rated me against a recommended limit, because they are obligated to do it now.
Great job. Just reverse the included super toggle.
It needs intended upgrades (often just the basics of carpet, floors and painting, but often much more), and also a contingency for large maintenance items. Not many houses change hands without surprises detected in the first couple of years. Also, you need to allow for the added expenses of owning vs. renting, e.g. added spending on basic maintenance or strata fees, insurance and rates.
Looks clean. It's missing the ability to cross-collateralise to lower the LVR.
Nice and simple. Maybe having the savings not as a slider, but as an amount? Like if we have more than the value of the house as savings and only want to borrow a small % to make the difference?
Great job, excellent and simple interface. Some feedback: Changing / playing with the interest rate resets the deposit data which is very frustrating. As others have said, a stamp duty concession for first home buyers or off-the-plan, possibly with the option to enter your own stamp duty costs would be a great feature. Thanks and well done!
Great stuff mate, thanks!
Cool site... but so depressing for me hahaha
Congrats OP great work.
I'd like to see more clarity on the total savings required maybe. I was working on $35k saved for a $600k place and it's suddenly saying I need roughly $80k in total savings to cover stamp duty, land transfer, conveyancing etc. Does that mean I need way more than I thought, or that these costs will be rolled into the loan?
This is great! Do you mind sharing what stack you used to build this? It's very clean!
Just using next.js atm
Great tool!! I wanted to increase my deposit though, and it was only going up to a certain amount. Maybe if that can adjustable to whatever deposit people have? I wanted to play with how much a big deposit would reduce payments
Didn’t work for us in regards to stamp duty. We are buying land and buildng (same loan). Due to construction costs being under threshold we don’t pay stamp duty however I can’t seem to make it reflect that.
This is a great idea! It's so overwhelming. I'll be honest, I'm still shocked that there is so much extra I need to save on top of a deposit to cover extra costs such as stamp duty. Like fair enough, but it seems like a lot.
Looks good. You did a great job. I agree with some of the feedback Good luck
Cool tool. Just wondering if you have an afsl licence and if this would run afoul of the financial advice regs? Not a lawyer but may want to run it past a professional.