FHA Loan Calculator

An FHA loan payment has five parts: principal and interest, monthly MIP (mortgage insurance premium), property tax, homeowners insurance, and HOA fees. Start with the down payment: FHA allows 3.5% down if your credit score is 580 or above, but requires 10% down if your score falls between 500 and 579. Below 500, FHA won't insure the loan at all. Whatever you don't put down becomes the base loan amount, and an upfront mortgage insurance premium (UFMIP) of 1.75% of that base loan amount is added on top — almost always financed into the balance rather than paid in cash, so you pay interest on it for the entire loan term. The annual MIP rate is where FHA loans differ most from conventional ones, and it comes straight from HUD's published rate table (Mortgagee Letter 2023-05). It depends on three things: your loan-to-value (LTV) at closing, your loan term, and whether your loan is at or below the county's FHA loan limit (standard) or above it (high-balance). For a 30-year (or any term over 15 years) standard-balance loan, the rate is 0.50% annually for LTV at or below 95%, rising to 0.55% above 95% LTV. High-balance loans over the county limit pay 0.70% at or below 95% LTV, and 0.75% above it. For 15-year-or-shorter terms, standard-balance loans pay just 0.15% at 90% LTV or below and 0.40% above 90%; high-balance loans on short terms pay 0.15% up to 78% LTV, 0.40% from 78–90%, and 0.65% above 90%. The high-balance threshold itself moves every year with HUD's county-by-county loan limit schedule — most counties sit at the national floor, but high-cost metro areas are set much higher, so the same loan amount can be "standard" in one county and "high-balance" in another. The rule that trips people up most: MIP cancellation depends entirely on your LTV at closing, not on how much equity you build later. If your LTV was 90% or below when you closed, MIP cancels automatically after 11 years of payments. If it was above 90%, MIP runs for the life of the loan — the only way out is to refinance into a conventional loan once you have enough equity (see the refinance calculator) or a conventional loan with less than 20% down through PMI, which cancels once you reach 78% LTV — unlike FHA MIP, it cannot be cancelled just by asking. DTI qualifying limits are HUD's baseline 31% front-end (housing payment to income) and 43% back-end (housing plus other debts to income), though lenders routinely approve higher ratios with documented compensating factors or automated underwriting approval. Before you shop, run your numbers through a mortgage calculator to compare against a conventional loan, and a house affordability calculator to see what price range your income and debts actually support.