By Joe Nelson — Retired Air Force, Nelson Home Group Team Leader and Mortgage Loan Originator
Kansas City metro · Updated for 2026
Know your real monthly payment before you fall in love with a house
This mortgage calculator runs VA, FHA, Conventional, and USDA side by side and includes the parts most estimators leave out — property taxes, homeowners insurance, and mortgage insurance. Fill in every field honestly and you will see the number that actually leaves your bank account each month, not a stripped-down principal-and-interest figure.
Built by Joe Nelson — 21-year Air Force veteran, Nelson Home Group team leader at Keller Williams KC North, and a licensed mortgage loan originator. Seeing the math from both the agent side and the lender side is the whole reason this tool exists.
The tool
Run your scenario
Choose a loan type across the top, then work your way down every field instead of leaving the defaults in place. The principal and interest math is exact. Taxes, insurance, and mortgage insurance stay estimates until a lender pulls your credit and you have a specific address under contract.
Start here
Why the inputs matter more than the calculator
An estimate is only ever as good as the numbers you feed it.
A couple came to us with a hard ceiling of $2,200 a month. They found a $300,000 house they loved and assumed they were comfortably inside their budget. Once we added the real property taxes and the real homeowners insurance on top of principal and interest, the payment landed closer to $2,400. They went ahead and bought it — but they made that choice with their eyes open, months before closing, instead of discovering it at the settlement table.
That is the entire purpose of this page. Most buyers leave taxes, insurance, and mortgage insurance sitting on default values, fall in love with a house, get under contract, and only then find out the payment does not fit their life. Five extra minutes of honest inputs is what separates a confident buyer from a house-poor one.
Want the long-form walkthrough with screenshots of every field? Read how to use a mortgage calculator before you buy in 2026.
Field by field
What every input on the calculator actually means
Seven fields drive the whole result. Here is what each one is asking for, and where buyers most often get it wrong.
Four options run across the top of the calculator: VA, FHA, Conventional, and USDA. Start with the one you are actually eligible for, then run the same house through a second tab so you are comparing real payments instead of guessing at the difference.
The price of the house you are looking at, or the ceiling you have set for yourself if you are still shopping. A $350,000 starting point lines up with a lot of what we see across the Kansas City metro right now.
Conventional can go as low as 3% through income-limited programs, 5% is the most common, and 20% removes mortgage insurance entirely. FHA has a 3.5% floor. VA can be zero down for eligible veterans.
Do not paste in a rate you found on a search engine. Those are marketing numbers that ignore your credit, your debt-to-income, and the property itself. Call a lender and ask what rates are running today with no buy-down baked in, then use that.
Thirty, twenty, fifteen, or ten years. Our advice: take the thirty and pay it like a fifteen. You still knock the balance down fast, and if income drops you can fall back to the lower payment without paying to refinance.
The most skipped field, and the biggest single reason payment estimates come back wrong. A rough starting point is about 1.4% of the price — roughly $4,900 on a $350,000 home. Once you have a real address, use the tax figure shown on the listing.
About $2,100 a year, or roughly $175 a month, puts most Kansas City homes in the right neighborhood for a first pass. We can introduce you to local insurance partners for an actual quote on a specific house.
The most variable number on the page. The typical range is 0.5% to 1.5% a year. On a $300,000 home with 5% down, that is roughly $95 a month at the low end versus about $356 at the high end — same house, same loan. Use the 0.85% default to explore, then get a real figure.
This calculator produces estimates for planning purposes only. It is not a loan offer, a rate lock, or a commitment to lend. Final figures come from a lender after a full application and credit review. Equal Housing Opportunity.
Choosing a loan
Conventional vs FHA: run both, then decide
You do not pick a loan type on instinct. You run the same house through both tabs and compare the monthly numbers honestly. The two things that usually decide it are what your mortgage insurance actually costs on the conventional side, and how long you plan to stay in the house.
Private mortgage insurance
- Required whenever you put less than 20% down.
- The rate moves with your credit profile and loan-to-value, so it varies widely from buyer to buyer.
- It goes away. Request removal at 20% equity, and it drops automatically at 78%.
- At 25% down you may land in a better rate tier because of loan level price adjustments. Ask your lender to price it both ways.
Mortgage insurance premium
- A flat rate that does not improve just because your credit is strong.
- Upfront MIP is 1.75% of the base loan amount and gets financed into the loan.
- At 3.5% down, that upfront charge effectively consumes about half the money you brought to the table.
- With less than 10% down the annual MIP stays for the life of the loan. At 10% or more it falls off after eleven years.
If your conventional PMI quote comes back high because of where your credit sits, FHA’s flat rate can genuinely win month to month. If you are only planning to be in the house a couple of years, that upfront FHA charge may never be recovered before you sell, and paying month-to-month PMI on conventional can cost you less overall. You cannot settle it without a real PMI number, which means a real application.
Down payment tiers on a conventional loan
Available through income-limited programs such as HomeReady and Home Possible. Mortgage insurance runs higher here because you are borrowing more against the value. Do not assume you qualify.
The most common path, and the calculator default. You will carry PMI, but it is manageable for most budgets.
Cheaper mortgage insurance and a lower payment than 5%.
No PMI at all, the lowest payment of the group, and real equity from day one.
May nudge you into a better interest rate tier. Not guaranteed, but worth asking your lender to quote both ways if the cash is already there.
Veteran or active duty? The VA tab removes the down payment requirement and carries no monthly mortgage insurance at all. See how those benefits work locally on our Veterans Serving Veterans page.
Common questions
Mortgage calculator questions we get every week
How accurate is a mortgage calculator?
The principal, interest, and amortization math is exact. Everything else — your rate, your PMI, your taxes, your insurance — is an estimate until a lender pulls your credit and you have a specific property under contract. Use it to plan and to compare scenarios, then confirm the final numbers with a licensed mortgage originator.
What is the difference between PMI and MIP?
PMI is private mortgage insurance on a conventional loan. It is priced off your credit profile and it cancels once you reach 20% equity. MIP is the FHA equivalent: a flat upfront charge of 1.75% of the loan plus a monthly premium, and with less than 10% down that monthly premium never cancels. Refinancing into a conventional loan is the only way off it.
How much should I put down on a conventional loan in Kansas City?
Five percent is the most common. Three percent is possible through HomeReady or Home Possible if you meet the income and credit rules. Ten percent buys you cheaper mortgage insurance, twenty percent eliminates it, and twenty-five percent may improve your rate. The right answer depends on your savings, your credit, and how long you intend to stay.
Should I take a 15-year or a 30-year mortgage?
Take the thirty and make the fifteen-year payment when you can. The fifteen-year rate is usually a touch better, but the commitment is rigid. If your income changes you are forced into a refinance you have to pay for. Paying a thirty like a fifteen gets you most of the interest savings and keeps the escape hatch open. Flexibility outvalues a quarter point.
What is FHA upfront MIP and why does it matter?
It is a one-time charge of 1.75% of the base loan amount that gets rolled into the loan and financed over thirty years. On a 3.5% down purchase it pushes your loan-to-value from about 96.5% to roughly 98.25% — effectively half your down payment. It matters most if you do not plan to stay long, because you may sell before you ever earn it back.
What is included in the monthly payment this calculator shows?
Principal, interest, property taxes, homeowners insurance, and the applicable mortgage insurance for the loan type you selected. It does not include HOA dues, special assessments, or utilities, so add those separately if the home you are considering has them.
Next step
Want real numbers instead of estimates?
You do not need to have it all figured out first — that is what the conversation is for. We are licensed mortgage originators and the highest-rated real estate team on Google in the Kansas City metro, which means one call gets you both the loan math and the house strategy from the same people.
New to all of this? Start with our first-time buyer guide or the full guide to buying a home. Joe Nelson is a licensed real estate agent and mortgage loan originator with Nelson Home Group at Keller Williams KC North. Equal Housing Opportunity.