About and editorial standards
A focused guide to the costs around a home
Your Home Cost publishes a free planning calculator and a library of sourced guides for people trying to understand the monthly and upfront costs of buying a home. The goal is to make the assumptions visible, keep the math inspectable, and help readers replace broad estimates with documents and quotes that apply to a particular purchase.
Publisher: Kevin Song for Your Home Cost. This page was last reviewed: .
Who publishes and maintains the site
Kevin Song, a full-stack web developer, created and publishes Your Home Cost. Kevin writes and maintains the calculator code, chooses and checks cited reference material, builds the numerical examples, and edits the explanatory pages. Public development work is available at kevsong.com.
This background is in software development, not licensed financial practice. Kevin does not claim to be a lender, mortgage broker, insurer, real-estate broker, appraiser, tax professional, attorney, or financial adviser. The calculator and guides are not represented as having been independently reviewed by one. A visible review date records the maintenance checks described below, not a professional certification or individualized advice.
What the calculator is for
The calculator is an early planning tool. It combines amounts entered by the user with dated public or industry benchmarks to organize a possible monthly budget and upfront cash estimate. Every figure remains editable. This makes it useful for comparing assumptions and identifying questions, but it does not make a credit decision, quote a loan, decide affordability, predict future costs, or determine the actual price of insurance, taxes, utilities, repairs, or association obligations.
A property tax bill, insurance quote, HOA budget, inspection proposal, utility history, and a lender's Loan Estimate or Closing Disclosure are more authoritative for an individual transaction. The calculator and guides repeatedly direct readers back to those primary documents.
How calculations and examples are maintained
Calculation rules are centralized so that the interactive calculator, methodology, and numerical guide examples do not rely on competing versions of the same formula. Automated tests cover amortizing mortgage payments, loan-program fees, normalization and rounding behavior, and selected mortgage examples used in the guide library. The full methodology and data-sources page explains the formulas, fallback behavior, reporting periods, and known limits.
The calculator distinguishes a number supplied by the user from a benchmark retrieved or derived by the site. Source status and reporting dates are shown where they are available so that a national average or historical estimate is not mistaken for a current personal quote.
How guides use sources and review dates
Guides favor primary government material and clearly identified industry sources that directly support the statement being made. Each permanent guide includes its own citations, a worked example, practical limitations, and links to related topics. A citation documents the reference consulted; it does not mean that the source sponsors, endorses, or has reviewed Your Home Cost.
A guide's review date changes only after its definition, calculator treatment, worked example, source links, and material caveats have been checked together. Effective-dated program rules retain their applicable dates, and market benchmarks retain their reporting periods. Updating a review date alone is not used as a substitute for checking the content.
Questions, corrections, and accountability
Readers can send a calculation discrepancy, outdated rule, broken citation, unclear disclosure, privacy question, accessibility barrier, or technical problem through the contact and corrections page. Useful reports identify the page, the exact statement or result, and the primary source or reproduction steps.
A reported calculator problem is checked against the shared calculation code; a content claim is checked against the cited source and newer primary material. When a material error is confirmed, the affected page is corrected and its review information is reconsidered. Minor spelling or formatting fixes do not imply that every source on a page was newly reviewed.
Advertising and editorial separation
Your Home Cost is configured to use Google AdSense. Advertising code is separate from the calculator formulas, benchmark selection, and guide content: an advertisement does not set a calculator input, change a result, choose a cited source, or become an editorial recommendation. The presence of an ad should not be read as an endorsement of the advertiser, and the presence of a citation should not be read as an endorsement of this site by the cited publisher.
Google and participating advertising providers may process technical information subject to regional choices and their own policies. The privacy policy describes Analytics, AdSense, cookies, identifiers, consent messages, and the controls available to visitors.
How to evaluate an estimate
Start by checking the input units and time period: an annual premium is different from a monthly payment, and a percentage of home value is different from a fixed dollar amount. Follow the citations for any rule or benchmark that affects the comparison. Then replace general values with the most recent property record, written quote, disclosure, or contract available to you. If the result matters to a purchase decision, compare it with more than one qualified source rather than relying on a single calculator.
The 15-topic guide library explains each input and cost category, while the methodology documents how those values flow into monthly and upfront totals. Together they are intended to show the reasoning behind an estimate, not merely produce a number.