Your income sets the loan. Your cash sets the completion. This tool works out both and tells you which one is really holding you back — including the taxes and fees no bank will finance.
Affordability is two separate questions that most people answer as one. The first is what a bank will lend you, which is decided almost entirely by your net monthly income and the repayments you already carry. The second is whether you can physically complete the purchase, which is decided by the cash in your account on the day. It is completely normal in Karachi to clear the first test and fail the second.
Pakistani banks work from your net take-home pay— what lands in your account — not your gross package. Against that they apply a Debt Burden Ratio: the share of income that all your monthly repayments combined are allowed to consume. The State Bank's consumer-financing regulations cap that at 50%, and most banks sit below the cap for home finance. Whatever you are already repaying on a car, a personal loan or a credit card is deducted from the allowance before the home loan is sized, which is why clearing a car instalment can move your budget more than a raise would.
The rest is arithmetic. Your allowance becomes a maximum instalment; the instalment, at the current mark-up rate and your chosen tenure, becomes a maximum loan; and the loan plus your down payment becomes a maximum price. At a typical bank rate of about 15.3% (October 2026), the tenure you choose moves that final number substantially.
The down payment is the visible part of the cash requirement and rarely the whole of it. Advance tax under section 236K, Sindh stamp duty and registration, the society or DHA transfer charges, your lawyer, and the agent's commission all fall due around completion, and a bank will not finance any of them — it lends against the property's value, not against your transaction costs. Filer status matters here too: the same property costs a non-filer materially more in advance tax alone.
Our fee figures are current as of July 2026. The practical consequence is that the cash you need is the down payment plus a further several per cent of the price, and if your savings only cover the down payment then your savings — not your salary — are setting your budget. That is the case this calculator is built to surface, because it changes what you should do next: someone limited by income needs a longer tenure or a co-applicant, while someone limited by cash needs a few more months of saving or a cheaper area.
Take a household bringing home Rs 500,000 a month with no existing loans, saving to buy in DHA as a filer, with Rs 10,000,000 put aside and a 20% down payment in mind. At a 40% debt burden the bank allows Rs 200,000 a month in repayments. Over 20 years at roughly 15.3%, that instalment supports a loan of around Rs 1.5 crore, which with the down payment points to a property near Rs 1.9 crore.
The cash test tells a different story. On a purchase at that level the down payment alone is close to Rs 38 lakh, and the taxes, transfer, legal and commission add several lakh more on top — comfortably inside a Rs 1 crore savings pot, so in this particular case income is the binding constraint and the answer stands. Halve the savings and it does not: the same salary, the same bank, the same rate, and the budget falls because the completion cash runs out first. Change the numbers above to your own and the tool will say which side you are on.
Banks size the loan so your total monthly repayments stay inside a set share of net take-home pay — the Debt Burden Ratio. The State Bank caps total consumer debt service at 50% of net income; most banks underwrite home finance between 35% and 45%. Existing car, personal or credit-card repayments come out of that allowance first, so they reduce the house before they reduce anything else.
Because most of them stop at the down payment. Advance tax under 236K, Sindh stamp duty and registration, DHA or society transfer charges, legal fees and agent commission are all due at completion and none of them can be financed. This calculator puts that cash requirement in front of you rather than behind the answer.
Housing finance is capped at around 85% of value, so plan on at least 15% down. Most banks in practice want 20–35%, and a business-income applicant is usually asked for more than a salaried one.
On paper, yes — stretching the term lowers the instalment, so the same income supports a larger loan. It also means considerably more mark-up paid over the life of the loan. Run both in the EMI calculator before deciding; the difference between a 15-year and a 25-year term on the same amount is usually larger than people expect.
Most banks allow a spouse's or close family member's income to be clubbed, which lifts the debt-burden allowance and the loan with it. The co-applicant is jointly liable for every instalment, so it is a shared commitment rather than a paperwork step.
No. It is a planning estimate. A bank will also assess your employment history, credit record, age at loan maturity and the property itself, and it will value the property independently. Treat the figure here as the range worth searching in, not a sanctioned amount.