Housing decisions deserve clearer numbers.

TrueCostHousing is built and maintained independently — not by a bank, lender, brokerage, homebuilder, or advertiser. It started from a familiar frustration: online mortgage estimates, closing-cost worksheets, and rent-versus-buy comparisons were often oversimplified, hidden behind a lead-capture form, or silent about the assumptions driving the number on screen. The site is built, tested, and corrected by one independent operator working from published formulas and public data, not proprietary models or paid placements.

Most housing calculators show a single number and hide the arithmetic behind it. A "monthly payment" estimate can quietly leave out property tax, insurance, PMI, or HOA dues; a "cash to close" figure can ignore prepaids and escrow; a rent-versus-buy comparison can lean on one national average instead of the numbers you actually have. Every TrueCostHousing calculator states its formula, works through a real example with the same arithmetic it applies to your inputs, and lists what it does not know about your specific situation — so the number on screen is something you can check, not just something you're asked to trust.

The name is a design constraint, not a slogan. A monthly principal-and-interest payment is not the true cost of owning or renting a home — property tax, insurance, PMI, HOA dues, maintenance, closing costs, and financing terms all change what a housing decision actually costs over time. "True cost" means building each tool to surface those pieces individually, label which ones are locally variable, and let you swap in your own number the moment you have one, rather than collapsing everything into a single figure that looks precise but hides what it left out.

Every calculator on this site is built to the same standard, described in full on the methodology page: a named, checkable formula; inputs you can edit rather than numbers baked into the tool; a worked example using the calculator's own default figures, checked by hand; and an explicit list of what the tool does not include. Calculations run entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is transmitted to a server or logged as an analytics event. The goal is a tool you can audit yourself, not a black box that asks for trust.

TrueCostHousing does not accept payment to change a calculator's default assumptions, rank a lender, or feature a product, and has no loan officers, agents, or advertisers on staff. No calculator here is personalized financial, legal, tax, or investment advice — every result is planning math built from the figures you provide. For a decision as large as a purchase, sale, refinance, or build, verify material numbers with your lender, insurer, tax authority, or another licensed professional before acting on them. The limitations page lists specifically what the calculators cannot do.

• Each calculator has a distinct job, formula, explanation, limits, and tests.
• Calculator inputs stay in the browser. If you email us, you control what the message contains.
• Locally variable figures remain user-entered without current authoritative evidence.
• We show planning math; we do not issue quotes, appraisals, tax opinions, or guarantees.

Formulas, default figures, and worked examples are reviewed on the cadence described on the methodology page, and every sourced figure carries the date it was last verified. When a formula, input, or source changes, the affected calculator is re-tested before the update goes live — see the formula register for what each calculator includes today. If you find an outdated figure, a broken link, or a calculation that looks wrong, the fastest way to get it fixed is the contact page.