1 in 4 American homeowners is house poor — spending so much on housing that everything else suffers. Are you one of them?
We calculate your housing cost ratio using the standard 28% front-end DTI rule used by most US lenders. Your total housing payment (mortgage P&I + taxes + insurance + HOA) is divided by your gross monthly income. Above 28% = warning zone. Above 36% = house poor territory.
Assumes gross (pre-tax) income. Uses PITI calculation. National average property tax rate: 1.1%. National average home insurance: $150/month. Educational use only — not financial advice.
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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% — 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 2.7× range in expected outcomes.
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.