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Mortgage Calculator

The first step in deciding to buy a home is getting yourself informed about all the place your money will be going to. Here are the basics:

MortgageCalculator.org

Javascript Mortgage Calculator by MortgageCalculator.org

What do each of these fields mean?

  • Home value: what will be the purchase price?
  • Down payment: money put towards house value before loan is taken out
  • Loan amount: home value minus down payment – what are you borrowing?
  • Interest rate: see PHM Loans website for current rate estimates
  • Loan term: most common is 30 years, but a lender can show you other options.
  • Property tax: county AND city. See paragraph below for how to estimate this
  • PMI (Private mortgage insurance often needs to be paid if the down payment is below 20% of the home value) often between .5% and 1.3%

For my clients, I have created an Excel spreadsheet with these same calculations and more – I include estimates on what to set aside for yearly house maintenance, a detailed monthly loan amortization table that allows additional payments to see what a faster loan payoff would look like, a table on estimating net gain/loss from selling a property, and a visual graph on principal and interest payments over the life of the loan.

How to estimate property taxes

In North Carolina, there will be county property tax and usually a city tax, as well. The “effective rate” for a home is these two rates combined. Rates are per $100 property valuation.

County

Here is a list of all North Carolina counties and their tax rates for the last five years.

CountyRate 2025
Wake.5171
Durham.5542
Orange.6383
Chatham.6000
Johnston.5200

City

Here is a list of several local cities and their tax rates since 2016.

CityRate 2025
Angier.49
Apex.356
Cary.34
Clayton.49
Durham.4371
Fuquay Varina.358
Garner.52
Holly Springs.3435
Knightdale.44
Morrisville.35
Raleigh.3550
Rolesville.4
Wake Forest.42
Wendell.42
Zebulon.577

How to I calculate my taxes from these tables?

  1. Determine the county and city location of the house you are interested in. Note: some houses lie outside of city limits, and therefore will not pay city taxes, only county (lucky).
  2. Add the two numbers together.
  3. Take the assessed home value (this is different and usually lower than the sales price) and divide by 100.
  4. Multiply the two numbers to get the estimated yearly property tax:

How to find assessed home value for estimating property taxes

This value is found on the website for the county that the house resides in. (Easy cheat: apps like Zillow will also populate this number in the Public Tax History section towards the bottom of a listing and will link to the applicable county’s website.)

CountyProperty Search Website
Wakehttps://services.wake.gov/realestate/search.asp?
Durhamhttps://taxcama.dconc.gov/camapwa/

Example calculation

  • A home of interest is identified to be in the City of Durham and in Durham county
  • The home has an assessed value of: $412,354
  • Durham County rate: .5542
  • City of Durham rate: .4371
  • .5542 + .4371 = .9913
  • ($412,354 / 100) X .9913 = $4,087.67

This page is a work in progress! Check back for more financial resources.

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