The convenience and ease of shopping online has changed almost every major industry – including the housing market. In 2019, nearly 50 percent of home buyers found their current home on the internet. In order to help make your online home shopping research helpful and informative, Next Step has created our TotalHome+ Calculator.
The TotalHome+ Calculator is an interactive, educational housing tool hosted on our website. This new tool can help you, as a potential home buyer, better understand your monthly payments. It also gives you a view of what a factory-built purchase might look like for you. It’ll also show you how energy-efficiency upgrades can be a smart investment – both for your wallet and the environment.
As you use the calculator, you’ll be able to choose between two different home types (single and multi-section) and whether your potential home with be on private property or in a manufactured home community. You will also be able to choose if you are interested in an ENERGY STAR® home. The end information that you will receive is an estimated monthly loan payment, total monthly cost of homeownership – this includes loan payments, insurance costs, property taxes and monthly rent for a community lease if applicable.
We want to support you in your home search, providing helpful tools and information. When Stacey Epperson, president and founder of Next Step, first started our organization, her primary goal was always to help people into a home. We hope that tools like our TotalHome+ Calculator can better ready you, as a potential home buyer, so you can walk into your new home for the first-time as a successful homeowner.