TedCo Software Financial Matters Blog

Home Selling Calculator, $29.95 USD, has been updated to version 2.1. Home Selling Calculator, which shows how the time a house spends on the market impacts the net profit received by the home owner, accepts a homeowner’s financial values related to selling a home, calculates the monthly carrying costs and determines how long a house can stay on the market at a range of sales prices while allowing the seller to make a profit.

In a down market, determining a home sell price may require counter-intuitive thinking. While no home seller wants to start low because it is difficult to raise an asking price, it may be better to start with a lower asking price when selling into a slow market.

Home Selling Calculator shows clearly how these monthly carrying costs eat into expected profits from selling a house. While it will not tell a home seller what price to set on a house, it shows the consequences of carrying costs on the sales price over time compared to other sale prices.

Home Selling Calculator, 2.1, is Windows®-based and runs on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. Home Selling Calculator includes a Home Inspection Form to help you understand what buyers may be looking for when they look at a house and a Mover’s To Do List which helps a home seller prepare for their move into another home.

Home Selling calculator may be purchased for $29.95 USD at http://www.homesellingcalculator.com. Site licenses and volume discounts are also available for real estate professionals. This release of Home Selling Calculator is a free update for registered users.

A fully-functional evaluation version of Home Selling Calculator may be downloaded from http://www.homesellingcalculator.com/home-selling-calculator-setup.exe.

Home Selling Calculator, $29.95 USD, shows how the time a house is on the market impacts the net profit of selling a home. Home Selling Calculator accepts a homeowner’s financial values related to selling a home, calculates the monthly carrying costs and shows the homeowner how long a house can stay on the market at a range of sales prices while allowing the seller to make a profit. If a profit is not possible at a given price and time on market, Home Selling Calculator shows the expected loss.

Selling a house for a profit is not easy in a down real estate market. Actually setting a good selling price may require some counter-intuitive thinking. No home seller wants to start low because it is difficult to raise an asking price. However, it may be better to start with a lower asking price when selling into a slow market.

Whatever method one uses to determine a desired sales price, home sellers often fail to consider the house’s carrying costs that will accumulate before the house sells. Carrying costs are the financial alligators that take large, monthly bites out of the seller’s profit while a house is on the market.

Home Selling Calculator shows clearly how these monthly carrying costs eat into expected profits from selling a house. While it will not tell a home seller what price to set on a house, it shows the consequences of carrying costs on the sales price over time compared to other sale prices.

Home Selling Calculator is Windows®-based and runs on Windows 2000, XP, and Vista. Home Selling Calculator includes a Home Inspection Form to help you understand what buyers may be looking for when they look at a house and a Mover’s To Do List which helps a home seller prepare for their move into another home.

Home Selling calculator may be purchased for $29.95 USD at http://www.homesellingcalculator.com. Site licenses and volume discounts are also available for real estate professionals. This release of Home Selling Calculator is a free update for registered users.

A fully-functional evaluation version of Home Selling Calculator may be downloaded from http://www.homesellingcalculator.com/download.htm.

Whether you’re ready to buy a house now or plan to wait until the market bottoms in your location, one thing you must know is how much house you can safely afford.

The news is full of stories about home buyers who bit off more than they could chew using funny-money loans. Excluding the legitimate reasons one might not be able to make their mortgage payment (loss of job, death of a spouse, medical events, etc.), the foreclosures in many regions of the country seem mostly a result of people borrowing more than they could afford to pay back. It may have been because of loose lending standards. Or it may have been because they believed they would be able to refinance into an affordable mortgage.

Whatever the reason, through experience or observation, most Americans have learned the importance of not buying more house than they can safely afford.

But that begs the question, “How much house can one safely afford?”

Not too long ago, it was reasonable to say, “you cannot afford all that a lender will offer”. But then came the credit crunch and responsible lenders (as they always have) use the time-tested concept of qualifying ratios. And many irresponsible lenders are returning to what financial tradition has long held to be true: 28% for housing and 36% for debt.

The real answer about affordability is not that difficult to discover. If you want an easy way to see what safe lending standards indicate about the amount of home you can “comfortably afford,” use the Mortgage Qualifier in Home Buyer’s Calculator Suite. It gives you a good idea of what you can expect to comfortably pay each month for your home. And it allows you to easily play with the numbers to see the effects of a pay raise or reduction in income. It also shows you the price range of homes that will be safely affordable for your income and debts.

Importantly, the default values in Home Buyer’s Calculator Suite for the housing and debt ratios are 28 and 36, respectively. In addition to these important mortgage qualifying ratios, “safely affordable” also means there’s money left over each month for living.

For years, one of the tips in Wheatworks’ software has been this: “As tempting as it may be and even though you may qualify for a big loan, avoid buying more home than you can comfortably afford.” The temptation to borrow to your limit is strong, but fight it.

Fortunately, banks and mortgage lenders are returning to the concept of historically sound qualifying ratios: 28 for housing and 36 for debt. Qualifying for a loan may be more difficult as a consequence of the current economic environment. However, because lenders are being more careful, I expect the quality of home loans made in the coming years will be much more sound than those made in the recent past.

Using the Mortgage Qualifier in Home Buyer’s Calculator Suite is easy. You enter your monthly income and your co-borrower’s monthly income, enter your monthly credit card, auto loan and other loan payments, and enter the amount you have available for a down payment. As you enter your personal financial values, the calculator automatically updates the results to indicate how much you can comfortably afford.

The Mortgage Qualifier is one of 12 financial calculators in Home Buyer’s Calculator Suite. Mortgage Qualifier is the calculator that will quickly get you in the home-buying ballpark in terms of what you can safely afford.

You can purchase Home Buyer’s Calculator Suite for $19.95 USD. Or download a free, trial version of Home Buyer’s Calculator Suite at http://www.homebuyerscalculator.com