Homebuying numbers you can actually trust — and check yourself.
Free tools built on public government data — what a home really costs, whether your fees are fair, and what help you qualify for. Every number shows exactly where it came from. No sales pitch, no referrals, and we never sell your information.
Sample: True monthly cost
A $425,000 home, 10% down · Worcester County, MA
- Principal & interest
- $2,514
- Property tax
- $445
- Homeowners insurance
- $132
- PMI (LTV > 80%)
- $149
- Maintenance reserve
- $354
True monthly cost
$3,594
Lender-approved payment: $2,663
The gap you plan around: $931/mo
Illustrative figures. Every line links to its public source — click a source tag above.
The problem
First-time buyers are drowning — and the biggest blind spot is cost.
The largest purchase of most people’s lives comes with pressure, jargon, and numbers nobody explains. We don’t sell you a way out. We show you the math, name every source, and let you decide.
65%
of buyers found the process harder than they expected.
46%
underestimate the true cost of owning a home.
~3x
more likely to regret the purchase if they felt rushed.
The tools
Free tools. No login for answers.
Each one explains its math and cites its data. None of them tells you what to do.
The decisions nobody explains
True Cost of Ownership
What a home actually costs each month — principal, tax, insurance, PMI, maintenance — against what a lender approves. The gap, named.
Open toolPressure Check
Being rushed is the #1 driver of buyer regret. What walking away risks vs. what overpaying to win costs over the loan — plus a self-check and a 24-hour framework. Free, no login.
Open toolBuy Now vs. Wait
Two paths side by side — tomorrow’s price and rate, the rent you’d pay, and the savings you’d add. The difference, decomposed. Never a verdict.
Open toolYear-2 Payment Shock
Why the payment jumps in year two: escrow is sized from the seller’s old tax bill, then the county reassesses at your price. The spike, estimated from public county rates.
Open toolRent vs. Buy
The net cost of owning against renting over the years you’ll stay — upfront cash, carrying costs, sale proceeds, and the return a renter earns on the down payment. The break-even year, named.
Open toolBuydown vs. Price Cut
A seller credit, spent two ways — buying down the rate or cutting the price. Permanent or temporary, against no credit at all. Total interest included.
Open toolThe core math, sourced
Affordability & DTI
The underwriter math behind "how much can I borrow" — front-end and back-end ratios in plain English.
Open toolCredit-Band Cost
What your credit-score band adds to a conventional loan, straight from Fannie Mae’s published price-adjustment matrix. The premium each band pays, named.
Open toolLoan Estimate Decoder
Type your Section A–C fees. We classify each — lender fee, shoppable, pass-through — and flag outliers against benchmarks.
Open toolCompare Loan Estimates
Two or three Loan Estimates side by side, fee by fee. The all-in totals, the cheapest per line, and — separately — the charges a lender actually controls, where shopping gives you leverage.
Open toolFee & Rate Index
Median closing costs and rate spreads by state and loan size, built from public HMDA data with suppressed thin cells.
Open toolDown Payment Assistance
A maintained directory of public assistance programs — each with a source link and a last-verified date.
Open toolHow we keep it honest
Why you can trust these numbers
These aren’t promises we hope to keep. They’re rules built into the product.
Every number shows its source
No figure appears without where it came from — the dataset, the year, and the date we pulled it. Click any source tag to see it yourself.
When the data’s too thin, we say so
If there aren’t enough records to be honest (fewer than 25), we mark it “not enough data” — never a made-up number.
We flag anything out of date
Numbers past their refresh window are marked in the open, and a program we haven’t re-checked in 90 days tells you to confirm with the source.
We never sell your info or hand you to a lender
No referral fees, no lead sales, no lender ads. We earn from the kit and partner tools — never from your data.
Everything you need to negotiate from a position of knowledge.
A self-guided kit that turns the tools into a step-by-step process — worksheets, scripts, and checklists. Instant delivery, 30-day refund, not-advice throughout.
What’s included
- Affordability worksheet
- Loan Estimate decoder cheat sheet + per-fee negotiation scripts
- Offer-to-close checklist
- Pressure Protocol: walk-away math + 24-hour decision framework
- Co-Buying Module: title structures + the conversation before you buy