An independent, free tool that answers one question most calculators skip: how much house you can afford with down payment assistance.
Standard affordability calculators ignore down payment assistance programs entirely, and the program directories that list those programs cannot do affordability math. A first-time buyer is left doing two separate pieces of research and joining them by hand. This site does both in one step, and shows its working.
DPA Calculator is published independently by a small team based in South Africa, building free financial calculators for US consumers. We are not a lender, mortgage broker, real-estate agent, or government agency. We do not originate loans, we do not take applications, and we are not affiliated with any state housing finance agency.
The calculator is free and requires no account or email. To cover hosting and development we use three things, disclosed openly:
This is an educational estimate, not a loan offer. It is not a pre-approval, not an eligibility determination, and not personalised financial advice. Program terms, income limits and availability are set solely by each housing finance agency and change often. Always confirm with the agency and a licensed loan officer or HUD-approved housing counsellor before making a decision.
Two things, and nothing else. First, the calculator on the home page: enter your income, your monthly debts, your savings and your state, and it returns the price range your income supports, the cash gap you still have to close, a matched assistance program with a link to the agency's own page, and a plain-English reading of the risks in that plan. It runs entirely in your browser, requires no account, and stores nothing.
Second, a library of written guides explaining the parts of the process that the calculator cannot: how assistance is structured, what the conditions actually oblige you to do, and the sequence that keeps a programme available to you. The guides exist because most published material on this subject is either a program advertisement or a form designed to capture your contact details, and neither answers the question a buyer is actually asking.
Alongside the tool we publish an independent guide library covering how assistance is structured, whether it has to be repaid, how income limits and credit minimums work, and the procedural mistakes that cost buyers programs they qualified for. Same standards as above: sourced, free, no signup.
Questions or corrections? Contact us — we read everything.