Google’s popular search engine has plenty of handy features built in, like their currency and measurement converters, and they’re adding one more to the list: A mortgage calculator. All one has to do is type “mortgage calculator” or \u201cinterest calculation\u201d into Google and the calculator will pop up for you to enter information to get the numbers crunched.
\nThere are no bells and whistles here, it\u2019s a super quick and easy process to find monthly payments and total cost of mortgage based on interest rate and length of loan. <\/p>\n
If consumers need something more in depth, they will still have to head over to lender sites, realtor.com, or a broker\u2019s website for those calculations since Google\u2019s calculator doesn\u2019t account for anything fancy like PMI or down payments. <\/p>\n
Variables like escrow, property taxes, and homeowner\u2019s insurance are even harder to estimate with an online calculator. Google has not announced whether they plan to add any of these more detailed features into their tool.<\/p>\n
Google snuck in a short announcement a few days ago about the new search feature on their Google+ news feed, \u201cPreparing for homeownership just got a bit easier. Starting today you can ask Google things like \u201cHow much can I borrow at $200 a month?\u201d or \u201cAt 5% APR how much can I borrow over 10 years?\u201d You can even adjust the mortgage amount, interest rate, mortgage period and more to see which financial options fit your needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
While several financial websites already offer similar tools, Google just made it a lot easier for people to calculate these numbers without navigating away from their search engine. It will be attractive to people who are looking for a quick answer or potential homeowners looking to do some basic planning before they consult with their realtor or loan officer (although they’re left to guess at the interest rate they’ll qualify for). <\/p>\n
The mortgage calculator is not only available on standard desktop platforms but also formatted for mobile devices. Don\u2019t worry if you don\u2019t see it on your platform just yet since the roll out has been gradual and doesn\u2019t seem to be working yet in any other region besides the U.S. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Google now offers a mortgage calculator inside the search engine – let’s talk about what it offers, who can use it, and where it works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337236,"featured_media":3610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[525,100,334],"class_list":["post-3609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-tech","tag-google","tag-hot-stories","tag-mortgage"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/02\/mortgage-calcuator-google.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337236"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3609"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4545,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions\/4545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}