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Can Your Tax Refund Buy You a Home?

Tax Refund Home Calculator 2026

The only calculator that connects your IRS tax refund to your actual home buying power. Enter your refund, see your options. Built by a banker.

$3,170
Avg. US tax refund 2026
3.5%
Min FHA down payment
1 in 4
Buyers fund down payment with refund
1
Your Tax Refund
Enter your expected or actual IRS refund amount
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$
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2
Your Target Home
What kind of home are you looking at?
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3
Location & Costs
Help us estimate closing costs and monthly obligations
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The part almost nobody publishes free

Prices and rates are widely reported. Whether a lender says yes is not. In the complete 2025 federal record, denial rates across the 100 largest FHA lenders ran from 1.8% to 78.7% โ€” same programme, same year.

And it is not simply who applies where: standardizing on state, loan amount, income, debt-to-income and loan-to-value, applicant mix explains only a 2.7ร— range in expected outcomes.

Which lenders approve most โ†’ Your metro โ†’ Denied? โ†’

CFPB HMDA 2025, computed by FinanceRateCalc. Covers the highest-volume lenders published per market, not all lenders. Historical observations, not predictions. CC BY 4.0, not independently reproduced.

The Denial Dispatch
One finding a week from the federal mortgage record.
One chart, three paragraphs, every Saturday. Measured, not assumed.
Get the Dispatch โ†’
AI Accuracy Index The Door Effect The Denial Map Open Data About 184 Metro Gaps Evidence Navigator Hallucination Files Press Newsletter
FinanceRateCalc ยท Independent analysis of the complete federal HMDA record ยท Measured, not assumed. ยท No lender or AI vendor funds or previews this work.