For most people, buying a house is one of the biggest and most impactful decisions of their financial lives.
That’s especially true now, with housing prices increasing rapidly across the United States. Planning a home purchase requires more thought and consideration than ever.
So here are several free spreadsheets to help you see what you can afford, save up for a downpayment, and budget for the ongoing expenses (and tax benefits) of homeownership.
What should be in your budget for buying a house?
Budgeting to buy a house involves several stages.
First, there’s learning what you can afford. Four common factors include:
- Housing cost to income ratio
- Total debt to income ratio (DTI)
- Available funds for down payment and closing costs
- Housing expenses (property tax, insurance, pmi, hoa, etc)
Then, there’s tracking and optimizing your savings for a down payment, closing fees, and moving.
Finally, when you own a home, your expenses will change – very often for the better!
If you want to make your own budget for planning a home purchase, here are some helpful tips to start with from Investopedia. This article provides standard rule-of-thumb numbers for how much you should budget for your down payment, closing costs, etc.
This also discusses managing your debt-to-income ratio to help you get qualified for a better mortgage.
Freddie Make Budget Worksheet Calculator
This is a useful and trusted web-based calculator for getting started with thinking about your home buying finances.
Once you input your data points, you can download the worksheet as an Excel file. This can then be opened in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel for further manipulation and analysis.
Here’s a similar tool for Canada.
Buying a House Budget Spreadsheet
Here’s a simple but effective spreadsheet from Reddit to help you experiment with different home purchase price scenarios for buying a home.
It also helps you make a quick personal budget that includes house maintenance, taxes, and the mortgage itself.
House Buying Model vs Renting Spreadsheet
The creator of this spreadsheet on Reddit used it to decide if they should rent or buy – in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the US. It’s simple but very detailed. The spreadsheet can help you answer:
- Should I buy vs rent?
- What is the potential tax-savings of being a homeowner?
- What are the other considerations to be made during the process?
And here’s another example of a Buy A House Or Rent spreadsheet.
Tiller Foundation Budget + Savings Budget
Tiller’s Foundation Template for Google Sheets includes a yearly and monthly budget. These can easily be modified to track multiple savings goals.
Because it’s powered by Tiller Money Feeds, it’s the only template on this list that automatically keeps your budgets and savings goals updated with your actual spending and account balances.
For even more control of tracking savings goals, add the free Savings and Debt sheet to your Foundation Template from Tiller Community Solutions.
Cost of Buying a House Worksheet
Use this worksheet from Allstate to keep track of and estimate the extra fees that go along with buying a house. This is a PDF, not a spreadsheet, unfortunately, but it would be easy to port over to Excel or Google Sheets.
Yearly Home Maintenance Budget Estimator
Owning a home is an ongoing expense. Boilers boil over and shingles blow away. Here’s a helpful estimator to help you plan for various big and small home maintenance expenses.
And for more help on estimated ongoing home maintenance costs, check out these additional posts from Redfin and HomeGuide.
Visit the Yearly Home Maintenance Budget Estimator from Costimates
Home Affordability Calculator
This spreadsheet helps you evaluate what you can afford to spend on a house, based on the four common factors above into consideration (housing expense to income ratio, debt to income ratio, available funds, housing expenses).
Get the template for Microsoft Excel 2007 and later
Also see the Home Expense Calculator from Vertex42.
