Could someone who has a good idea give me a ball park figure of the mortgage payment on $160,000?

Madman is right for principal and interest. There are often 4 or 5 components to a mortgage payment though. Every mortgage payment should have principal and interest (although in the worst of times many payments were interest only). Many times there are property taxes, homeowner's insurance and if less than 20% was put down, then private mortgage insurance, too.

On a $160,000 mortgage I would estimate property taxes to be ~$220 a month, homeowner's insurance to be about $60 a month and depending on downpayment, PMI could be anywhere from $50-$200 a month. Property taxes are a real wild card though. I have personally seen anything from 0.5% of value per year (low) to 4.5% of value per year (very, very high). On a $175,000 house, this is the difference between $73 per month to $656 per month. Homeowner's insurance is pretty variable too, especially if this home is close to a coast.

On average, I'd expect taxes and the two insurances to add ~$400 a month to MadMan's calculated amount, but it could be much more!

good luck!

A really quick and simple way to get a ball park figure is to plug a couple of numbers into a mortgage payment calculator. There are several of these online; try http://www.bankrate.com/brm/mortgage-calculator.as...

According to them, the national average interest rate is 5.11% so I plugged this in on a 30 year fixed rate calculation and got a monthly payment figure of $869.70. You can find the average rate for your area by putting in your zip code. Hope this helps.

There are good mortgage payment calculators on www.bankrate.com. Just keep in mind that this will just be principal and interest. You have to add property taxes and insurance to get the total monthly payment.

At 5.5% for 30 years, your payment would be approx. $910 per month. And there would not be any deals.

plenty of free mortgage calculators on the internet - you also need to know the interest rate and length of loan