Before you fall in love with a house
What you can genuinely afford here.
Every national calculator solves the same sum: your income times a ratio, less your debts, becomes a payment, and the payment becomes a price. That works in a market where tax and insurance are small. Ours is not one of those markets, so this asks a harder question and gives you a smaller answer.
Comfortable
The most a lender would allow
What the monthly payment is made of
Why this number is lower
Three things the national calculators leave out.
Your tax bill is not the seller's tax bill
Florida caps what a homesteaded owner pays, and that cap resets the day you buy. Across recent sales the buyer's rate runs about 1.33% of price, and 1.60% in Cape Coral, against a headline figure closer to 0.97%. Use the seller's number and you will think you can afford tens of thousands more than you can.
Insurance is a real line, not a rounding error
Wind and flood on a block house from the nineties can cost more than the property tax. The lender counts every dollar of it against the same ratio, whether or not you were expecting it.
Dues and CDD count against you too
Association dues come off what you can borrow, pound for pound. A community development district assessment is worse, because it hides inside the tax bill rather than arriving as its own line.
A number is not a mortgage approval.
This tells you what the arithmetic allows. A lender will tell you what you can actually borrow, and the two are rarely the same. If you want an introduction to someone who will give you a straight answer, ask.