The Payment filter is the one most buyers should turn on first. It hides every home whose full monthly payment is above your limit, which is a far more honest filter than price.
The filter measures homes against your investment profile, so the profile has to exist. It holds two figures:
Your maximum monthly payment — the most you are comfortable paying each month
Your available funds — the cash you have for the down payment and closing costs
You set these when you create your account. If you already have a pre-approval, having your loan officer upload it through LoanLink is better than typing your own numbers, because then the limit is your lender's real decision rather than your estimate.
Go to the search screen and click the Payment toggle above the results. That is it — the results immediately narrow to homes at or below your payment limit.
This is the part that makes the filter worth using. The payment is not just the loan. It is:
Principal and interest
Property taxes
Homeowner's insurance
Mortgage insurance, where your loan requires it
Any HOA or condo fee
So a $400,000 condo with a $450 association fee can fail the filter while a $430,000 house with no HOA passes it. That is not a quirk — it is how your lender sees the two homes, and it is why filtering by price misleads people.
Every property card that survives the filter displays its own Estimated Monthly Payment and Total Cash Needed to Close, calculated from your loan terms: your interest rate, your loan type (FHA, Conventional and so on) and any applicable loan limits.
Two ways, and they do different things:
Change your limit in Profile → Homebuying Budget. If your profile comes from a loan, you can only move it down — the checkbox Search with lower payment lets you set a lower ceiling than your approval. You cannot raise it above what your lender approved.
Change the home in OfferPro. Adjust the offer price, the down payment or the seller contribution on a specific property and watch its payment move. A home that fails the filter at asking price often passes on a realistic offer.
Turn the Payment filter on and leave it on. The homes it hides are the ones that would have wasted your weekend. If the list comes back too short, lower the price range before you raise the payment limit — you will end up happier.
See also: Filter by Payment & Cash Needed and OfferPro: Build & Auto-Qualify Your Offer.
