- With Zillow’s latest app filter, potential homebuyers can now browse for properties based on a monthly mortgage cost range rather than list prices.
- The filter is integrated with the most current mortgage rates, ensuring that search results remain within the shopper’s financial capacity, regardless of any fluctuations in rates or prices.
- The average monthly mortgage expenses increased by $431 within the past year, sometimes fluctuating by over $100 each month.
Zillow has introduced a new way for home buyers to search for properties that align with their monthly budget amidst a rapidly changing real estate market. Instead of relying solely on list prices, Zillow’s new filter allows shoppers to browse homes within a specified range of all-in monthly costs. This monthly cost includes principal and interest, as well as estimates for insurance costs, taxes, and HOA fees. This filter is aimed at reducing confusion for buyers, who often struggle to decipher what they can truly afford when relying solely on list prices.
This new monthly payment filter is available on the Zillow app, and comes at a time when mortgage rates have been on a rollercoaster ride, with last year’s drastic rise in rates leading to a significant increase in monthly costs for home buyers. As a result, monthly mortgage costs have nearly doubled since 2020 due to high rates and record-breaking home appreciation. Additionally, shifting mortgage rates often cause costs to fluctuate by more than $100 per month.
According to Amanda Pendleton, a consumer finance expert at Zillow Home Loans, shoppers often face difficulty when trying to determine what they can truly afford due to the impact of mortgage rates on monthly payments. The addition of costs like taxes, insurance, and HOA fees can quickly push a shopper’s budget beyond its limits. Pendleton says that Zillow’s new search tool does the math for shoppers, giving them the confidence to find a home they love and can afford.
Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, has introduced a new filter to help home buyers navigate the challenging affordability landscape. The filter takes into account the buyer’s down payment amount, income, and debts to estimate the monthly mortgage cost they can afford, and then feeds in updated mortgage rates to show homes that fit within their budget. According to a recent survey by Zillow Home Loans, understanding all costs associated with a mortgage payment, figuring out how much home they can afford, and researching mortgages and rates are the most difficult financing activities among prospective home buyers. With fast-rising mortgage rates and volatile markets, it has become increasingly challenging to plan and budget for a house purchase. Zillow’s new filter, in addition to down payment assistance and affordability calculators, can help buyers make sense of the market and find homes that fit their budget. Despite the peak in home values in June, mortgage rates that reached 20-year highs later in the year caused monthly mortgage payments to peak in October, according to Zillow data.
About Zillow Group
Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: Z and ZG) is reimagining real estate to make it easier to unlock life’s next chapter. As the most visited real estate website in the United States, Zillow® and its affiliates offer customers an on-demand experience for selling, buying, renting, or financing with transparency and ease.
Zillow Group’s affiliates and subsidiaries include Zillow®; Zillow Premier Agent®; Zillow Home Loans™; Zillow Closing Services™; Trulia®; Out East®; StreetEasy®; HotPads®; and ShowingTime+™, which houses ShowingTime®, Bridge Interactive®, and dotloop®. Zillow Home Loans, LLC is an Equal Housing Lender, NMLS #10287 (www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org).
