Banking and financial websites often use mortgage calculators to help clients quickly estimate their monthly mortgage payments based on the data they enter like their total down payment, loan amount and their desired term length.
Calculators can also be customized to calculate all kinds of vital mortgage details — and most importantly, to effectively deliver your value proposition across.
What information can a mortgage calculator provide?
A mortgage calculator is an extremely helpful tool for anyone who is looking to buy a new home or any type of real estate. Whether they’re a first-time buyer or a seasoned pro.
A website calculator gives those who are planning to take out a new mortgage a better idea of some key details such as:
How much house they can afford
How much to save up for a down payment
Ideal length of the mortgage
Estimated monthly payments
Although this kind of information can be easily figured out by someone who has a decent understanding of financing, changing different variables is much easier with a well designed mortgage calculator which helps your potential clients better visualize different scenarios with just a few clicks.
How to Calculate Monthly Mortgage Payments
To better understand how to calculate monthly mortgages, let’s check out a basic mortgage calculator first.
Although the mortgage payment formula is not extremely complex, it is much simpler and certainly more straightforward to provide your website visitors with a calculator widget or app.
Things to Consider When Choosing a Mortgage
Deciding on a mortgage requires a lot of careful consideration and financial planning. It’s a long-term commitment, so you have to be confident that you’ll be able to comfortably fulfill your obligations until the end of the loan
Monthly mortgage payments go up with higher interest rates and shorter-term lengths. If you want to drastically lower your monthly mortgage payments, look for a lender who can give you decently low-interest rates and longer repayment terms. But it’s also important to remember that longer mortgage terms means that you’ll pay significantly more in interest over the entire length of the mortgage.
A 30-year mortgage might sound like a better deal if you only look at the monthly payment. But for many people, a 15-year mortgage and the lower total interest payment make more sense. To help your clients understand these concepts quickly, you can set up your mortgage calculator widget to show the total interest paid over the entire length of the mortgage.
How to Create an Advanced Mortgage Calculator
Basic mortgage calculators normally don’t take into account variable interest rates which require more complex calculations. With our calculator builder, you can add all the same Excel or Google spreadsheets equations you already use for your day-to-day operations and give it a nice interface to make it easier to use and less intimidating for your target audience.
With an advanced mortgage calculator, you can add more options so people can see the pros and cons of different mortgage terms, such as the differences between a Fixed Rate and an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM). You can set it up so that it automatically calculates for monthly or bi-weekly payments, and even take into account a large balloon payment at the end of the mortgage. It can also include additional expenses such as Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI), property taxes, and closing costs so you can give your clients a more accurate estimate. Last but not the least, you can add a call-to-action button so more of your visitors will convert into leads.
What else can you do with a mortgage calculator?
A mortgage calculator can be customized to suit whichever part of the industry you’re involved with. Here’s a quick look at some of the more common types of advanced mortgage calculators used throughout the mortgage lending industry.
Mortgage Refinance Calculator
Financial institutions that specialize in refinancing and debt consolidation can easily set up a mortgage refinance calculator to attract new clients by letting them see how much lower their payments will be when they take advantage of lower interest rates and/or better mortgage terms.
Although it’s pretty clear cut to most people that a lower interest rate will save them a lot of money in the long term, a refinancing calculator can show them all the numbers they need to see and give them the motivation to push through with the transaction. A refinancing calculator is also very helpful to people who want to shorten their mortgage terms from a 30 or 15 years to a 10-year mortgage to take advantage of the lower overall interest payments.
You might also want to keep existing clients from refinancing with another company by offering them better terms and saving them the hassle of additional paperwork and extra closing costs. On the other side of the spectrum, you can also use a refinancing calculator to convince people to switch from their current loan provider over to you.
Reverse Mortgage Calculator
A reverse mortgage calculator is very useful for people who want to cash in on their home equity. It helps them figure out the best terms and payouts they can get from different institutions.
Reverse mortgage calculators are quite different from other types of mortgage calculators because they also require the age of the homeowner/borrower, as well as how many years the borrowers plan to occupy the home to properly estimate the payouts.
Home Equity Calculator
With a home equity calculator, your website visitors and potential clients can easily figure out how much equity they have in their mortgage.
Home equity is calculated by subtracting the outstanding loan balance from the current market value of the property.
Home Equity = Current Market Value - Outstanding Loan Balance
This information is essential for anyone who wants to determine their loan-to-value (LTV) ratio and net worth.
Home equity calculators are really helpful tools for potential clients who are looking to get:
Refinancing
A second mortgage
A home equity line of credit (HELOC)
Home affordability calculator
With a home affordability calculator, you let people see how their income impacts their housing budget. You input your income, down payment, and monthly debts (like student loans, credit card, and car payments), to get a price range to use in a home search.
People who want to pay off their mortgage quicker with additional payments will want to know two important details:
How many years they can slash off of their original mortgage terms
How much they can save on interest payments
An extra payment or early mortgage payoff calculator gives your target audience more insight into how they can strategically manage their mortgage payments and loan terms so they can achieve their financial goals much quicker. It allows them to see the numbers and play around with different scenarios so they can better determine which extra payment option they’re most comfortable with.
The most common ways to make additional mortgage payments include:
One-time lump sum payment
Bi-weekly payments
Additional payments every month
The best extra payment option depends on the lender’s circumstances and their current financial situation. People who experience a sudden financial windfall will prefer a large one-time payment. Those with more room in their monthly budget would rather have slightly higher mortgage payments and pay off the mortgage quicker over time.
Can I have multiple mortgage calculators on my website?
The possibilities are endless when it comes to the different types and the number of mortgage calculators you can add to your website. When your target audience has access to multiple mortgage calculator widgets all on one site, they can educate themselves about your products and services in much greater detail — turning them into higher quality leads when they eventually click on your call-to-action buttons.
If you have special terms that others don’t offer, a mortgage calculator is very effective at demonstrating to potential clients your competitive advantage and how unique your value proposition is.
You can use mortgage calculators in a variety of different ways to support your different digital marketing campaigns which might include:
Email marketing
Paid and sponsored ads
Blog posts
Your site’s products and services section
The effectiveness of your mortgage calculator is really up to you. If you can come up with the best mortgage calculator widget amongst your peers and competitors, you can make your brand stand out more and significantly improve your lead generation.
What are the benefits of a custom mortgage calculator?
A mortgage calculator can positively affect different aspects of your business. Here’s a quick rundown of its immediate benefits.
Mortgage calculators boost conversions
A mortgage calculator is very effective at demystifying many of the complex details involved in securing a mortgage. It makes your value proposition more transparent and helps you build a stronger connection with potential clients.
Your target audience will also appreciate the fact that you’re making an effort to make the information they need more accessible and make their decision-making much easier. All this helps with the trust-building process which is essential when you’re trying to convert visitors into leads and leads into clients.
A calculator form lets you capture more market data
Using our calculator builder, you can automatically send the data your visitors enter into the calculator form to your favorite CRM software or any other database you wish to use. This not only allows you to easily capture people’s contact information but also gain more insight into what the market is looking for.
You can use the data you’ve collected to figure out if you’re attracting the right type of visitors and come up with new ways to grow your bottom line. And all you need to do is add a call-to-action button to your calculator widget.
Frees up marketing and customer service resources
Calculator forms are extremely effective at generating highly informed leads who already have a good understanding of what your business can offer. You’ll spend less time talking them through the basic steps because they’ve already done most of the legwork themselves. A highly motivated lead typically needs less convincing and will move quickly through your marketing and sales funnel because they’re more interested in what kind of deal they can negotiate.
Interactive calculators attract more traffic and boost SEO
By simply adding a mortgage calculator to your website, you’re also making your web pages more interactive and engaging. Site visitors are more likely to spend more time on a page that features a mortgage calculator than pages that are simply filled with marketing copy. In time, search engines will also recognize that you’re providing a useful resource to your target audience and your search engine rankings will start moving up, which will bring in even more traffic to your site.
How do I add a custom mortgage calculator to my website?
Creating and adding your bespoke mortgage calculator has never been easier with our calculator form builder. You don’t need any sort of coding knowledge to get started, and as long as you can edit the HTML of your website, you can add a calculator widget to your website in a matter of minutes.
You can use our mortgage calculator templates, as well as any of our other premade calculator templates, as a base and customize it to suit your specific requirements. If you’d like to build your calculator from scratch, you can head on over to our Help section for detailed tutorials and pointers.
Our pricing is affordable and will typically cost you less in a month than what a competent web developer charges per hour. You can even try it out completely free of charge until your calculator form reaches 100 visitors per month so you can determine whether ConvertCalculator is the right solution for your needs.
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