Practical guides, how-tos and comparisons to get the most out of our free online tools.
The same $60,000 lump sum, three ways. Recasting drops the payment by $405.12 and saves $61,537 of interest. Keeping the payment saves $174,359. Refinancing does something else again — and which one wins depends on a question nobody asks.
Camille Laurent · 11 min read
Value minus debt gives $139,167. After the costs of selling it is $111,867. What a lender will actually let you borrow against it is $55,167. Same house, same day, three answers — and the third is the one that governs.
Camille Laurent · 12 min read
Three constraints decide it — the deposit, the lender's ratio and the payment you can live with — and they bind in a different order for different buyers. Same $90,000 income, three answers: $230,769, $355,360 and $431,922.
Camille Laurent · 15 min read
A conversion rate is the share of visitors who take a desired action. Here is the simple formula, typical benchmarks, and how to read the number without fooling yourself.
Daniel Okonkwo · 4 min read
Estimate upload time with one formula: file size in bits divided by your upload speed. Learn why upload is usually slower than download and how overhead affects the result.
Daniel Okonkwo · 4 min read
Six markets, six different answers to who pays and how much. The same $300,000 sale costs the seller $10,710 in one and $18,450 in another — and against $100,000 of equity, those are 10.71 and 18.45 percent, not 3.57 and 6.15.
Camille Laurent · 16 min read
Five percent nominal growth is 2.4390 percent real — by division, not subtraction. Ownership costs take it to 0.0317 percent, transaction costs demand a 2.85-year hold before you break even, and leverage multiplies whatever is left by five in both directions.
Camille Laurent · 14 min read
Six weeks empty is 11.11 percent vacancy on a one-year tenancy and 4.00 percent on a three-year one. The break-even rent increase that justifies risking that void is 29.52 percent over a year and 8.99 percent over three.
Camille Laurent · 15 min read
Gross rent minus mortgage says $15,934. The real cash flow is $1,392.56. Here is the full profit-and-loss account line by line, and the four separate returns a rental produces — of which cash flow is the smallest.
Camille Laurent · 16 min read
A draw period and a repayment period behave completely differently. On a $100,000 line at 8 percent the payment goes from $666.67 to $955.65 overnight — and to $1,200.17 if the rate has reached 12 percent. Ten years of interest-only payments leave the balance exactly where it started.
Camille Laurent · 17 min read
No down payment, no mortgage insurance at any loan-to-value ratio, and one funding fee — 2.15 percent on a first-use purchase with nothing down, waived entirely for disability-compensated veterans. On a $400,000 house that $8,600 fee equals between two and seven years of the private mortgage insurance it replaces.
Camille Laurent · 16 min read
An FHA loan buys a lower entry barrier with a permanent cost. Two premiums: 1.75 percent upfront, financed, which costs $8,616 in interest on a $6,755 charge; and an annual premium that at the minimum down payment runs for the whole term. The break-even against a conventional loan is not a date — it is a PMI rate, and it is 1.26 percent.
Camille Laurent · 17 min read