Monthly Payment on a $300,000 Mortgage

Reading a $300,000 mortgage payment

The figures above are principal and interest (P&I) only — the part of the payment that pays down the loan plus the lender’s interest. Your real monthly cost also includes property tax, homeowners insurance, any HOA dues, and PMI if your down payment is under 20%. Use the full calculator to add those and see your total.

A lower rate or a shorter term changes the number a lot. A 15-year term has a higher monthly payment than a 30-year, but far less total interest over the life of the loan.

Sizing income for a $300,000 loan

Underwriters size a mortgage against gross income, and the 28/36 rule is the convention quoted most often: housing costs at or under 28% of gross monthly income, all debt payments together at or under 36%. Run backwards, the $1,896.20 principal-and-interest payment at 6.5% over 30 years implies a gross income of about $81,266 a year — $6,772 a month — for this payment alone to sit at the 28% mark.

Read the two conventions together: at $63,207 of income this payment uses the entire 36% debt allowance by itself, while at $81,266 it takes 28% and leaves the remainder for everything else. An actual approval also counts property tax and insurance inside the housing figure, which pushes the implied income higher than the principal-and-interest arithmetic here.

The house prices a $300,000 loan reaches

A loan amount is not a listing price — the down payment stands between them. A $300,000 loan matches roughly a $375,000 purchase with 20% down ($75,000 in cash), a $333,333 purchase with 10% down ($33,333), or a $315,789 purchase with 5% down ($15,789).

Below 20% down, lenders typically add private mortgage insurance to the bill until your equity grows past that line, so the smaller-cash routes above carry a recurring cost the loan arithmetic alone does not show.

Two schedules for the same $300,000

At 6.5%, the 30-year schedule runs $1,896.20 a month and accumulates $382,633 of interest by the final payment. The 15-year schedule runs $2,613.32 — $717.12 more each month — and accumulates $170,398, a difference of $212,235 over the life of the loan.

The required payment is also a commitment. The 30-year schedule asks for less every month and leaves open the option of paying extra when convenient; the 15-year schedule locks the higher figure in. That flexibility difference never appears on the interest line but matters just as much in a tight month.

One percent extra per year on $300,000

Take the 30-year schedule at 6.5% and add $250.00 to every payment — one percent of the loan per year, spread monthly. The loan retires in 262 months instead of 360: 8 years and 2 months sooner, and $120,336.94 less interest paid ($262,297 instead of $382,633).

The saving concentrates at the front of the schedule. Early on, most of each payment is interest, so an extra $250.00 lands almost entirely on principal and removes the interest that balance would have generated for decades. The same dollars added in year 25 would do far less.

Borrowing $300,000: where fixed costs bite

Loans of this size sit at the starter end of the range these pages cover, and the fixed costs of buying loom larger against them. Take closing costs of $5,000 — an assumption for scale, not a quote: that is 1.7% of a $300,000 loan, and the equivalent of 2.6 months of the $1,896.20 payment.

Sellers and lenders quote in percentages; budgets run in dollars. On a $300,000 loan the useful habit is converting every quoted percentage into its dollar figure — as the table above does for rates — because at this scale a handful of fixed fees can rival a whole point of rate.

Frequently asked questions about a $300,000 mortgage