🔑First Keys

NYC Housing Counselor Simulator

You're a housing counselor at a NYC community organization. Your mission: find the most expensive home each client can afford while keeping their finances healthy.

Your Challenge

  • Maximize home price while staying affordable
  • đŸŸĸ Green = optimal | 🟡 Yellow = acceptable | 🔴 Red = problem
  • Adjust price, down payment, and loan type to find the ceiling
  • Get within 5% of maximum for full points!

Scoring

  • 10 points: Within 5% of maximum affordable price
  • 5 points: Affordable but not maximized
  • 0 points: Unaffordable (DTI >43% or insufficient reserves)
đŸ˜ŧ
You'll learn:
â€ĸ How down payments affect monthly costs
â€ĸ How loan terms impact total interest paid
â€ĸ How to calculate debt-to-income ratios
â€ĸ The relationship between loan amounts and payments
â€ĸ How to buy a home that will make you feel poor

That's Mango. He has opinions. He works for the bank. Use your judgment. Click on the cat for more.

Final Results

0%
Performance Rating

💡 What You Just Learned

You just applied the core concepts of Time Value of Money:

  • PV/PMT relationship: The loan amount is the present value of all future payments
  • Inverse rates: Higher interest rates mean smaller affordable loans
  • Amortization: Early payments are mostly interest; later payments are mostly principal
  • Total cost: A 30-year mortgage means paying 80-100% of the home price just in interest

🤔 Reflect:

What surprised you most? Which client's situation felt closest to your own future?

📸 Submit to Brightspace

Take a screenshot of this screen showing your final score and submit it to complete this assignment.