The mortgage payment your lender quotes leaves out upkeep. Before you buy a home, add 2% of its price per year for maintenance, plus any homeowners association dues, and check that the tax estimate uses your purchase price. Then bank the gap between that total and your rent for three months to test whether you can carry it.
That quoted payment often includes property taxes and homeowners insurance, collected through escrow. It has no line for a dead water heater or a roof at the end of its life.
Upkeep is the biggest cost the payment leaves out. In Bankrate’s 2025 study of the yearly costs of owning a typical single-family home, maintenance came to $8,808, more than property taxes and insurance combined. Bankrate figured it at 2% of the home’s price, which on a $400,000 house works out to about $667 a month.
The escrow portion isn’t fixed, either. Even on a fixed-rate loan, the payment rises when your property tax bill or insurance premium does. In LERETA’s 2026 survey of 1,037 homeowners, three in five of those whose payment had gone up said the increase surprised them.
So price the house, not the loan. Before you make an offer, build the monthly number yourself:
- Check that the tax estimate uses your purchase price, not the seller’s bill. California reassesses a home at market value when it changes hands, and Florida resets a homestead’s capped assessment to market value the January after it sells.
- Get a homeowners insurance quote for the address itself.
- Add homeowners association dues and 2% of the price a year for maintenance.
- Ask the seller for 12 months of utility bills to see what the house costs to run.
Then run a trial. For three months, move the difference between that total and your current rent into savings on the day rent is due. If the transfers squeeze your budget, so will the house. If they don’t, you’ve started the repair fund you’ll need after closing.
If a house works only at the lender’s payment, it doesn’t work.
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