Mortgages & Home Buying

The biggest purchase most people make.

How to price a house, what a mortgage actually costs, and the closing-day surprises worth catching a week earlier.

Guides in this topic

• How much house can I actually afford? — Ignore the bank's number. Use the 28/36 rule and add up the real cost of owning. (6 min read)
• Fixed vs. adjustable rate mortgages, in plain English — One protects you from surprises. The other bets you'll move or refinance. (5 min read)
• Closing costs: the 2–5% surprise no one budgets for — The line items on a Loan Estimate, and which ones you can actually shop. (5 min read)
• PMI: what it is, when it goes away, and how to kill it early — Private mortgage insurance protects your lender, not you — treat it as temporary. (4 min read)
• When refinancing actually saves money — The 0.75% rule of thumb, and why break-even math beats headlines. (5 min read)

How FairPriceGuru works

FairPriceGuru is a free consumer price-fairness service. We benchmark what things actually cost, then let you check your own bill, quote or invoice against those benchmarks. Every price we quote is tied to a named source, we do not accept payment to change a verdict, and none of our tools require an account.

Start with the free tools hub, run a document through the bill analyzer, or read our methodology.