This week's viewpoints article is a bit of a detour from the normal sort of feature, as we are taking the opportunity to blow our own trumpet most heartily. Our technology team have been hard at it of late with the creation of a new 'Calculators' section on the site. They range from the very simple and straightforward 'rent converter' to the complex mortgage schemes comparison tool. There are ten in total - below we give you a brief rundown on each one:

This is a very simple calculator for tenants who are not too hot on the old maths. When you are looking at rental property, some rent is quoted per month and some is quoted per week. This calculator lets you convert from weekly to monthly rents and vice versa, as well as working out each person's share.
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The vast majority of people go through a period of indecision about whether they want to take the step of buying a property. Given the costs attached to buying a property, it can sometimes be worth renting instead, especially if you are only planning to live in your new home for a short period. This calculator will help you compare what your total outlay will be over a set length of time if you buy or rent a property of the same value.
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Just how much exactly can you afford to spend on your mortgage repayments? Do you know where your money goes each month? Use this tool to help you answer both these questions by totting up your income and subtracting your monthly expenditure on a wide variety of items. Some lenders who base their lending on affordability criteria use a simplified version of this form.
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Different lenders use slightly varying formulae to calculate the amount of money that they are willing to lend to you, though most use a multiples-based method. You can usually find out the exact criteria that will be used by a particular lender by looking on their website, reading their product literature or telephoning them. Use this calculator to work out approximately how much you will be able to borrow according to different multiples criteria.
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Trying to work out where you will be left financially once your move is done and dusted can be quite complicated once you take into account all the different costs involved in buying, selling and moving house. We've set out most of the costs for you, all you have to do is fill in the numbers and you will find out what your overall balance will be.
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For any given product, this calculator will help you work out what your repayments will be, whether it's an interest-only or repayment mortgage. You can factor in a step in the interest rate, so you can work out what your repayments will be once a discount period is over, set the frequency of interest calculations to see the effect that has, choose whether to add your up-front costs to the loan or to pay them immediately and work out the Annual Percentage Rate and Internal Rate of Return for your loan.
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This builds on the previous calculator, allowing you to add a further step in the level of interest rates. You may, for instance, have a two-step discounted rate, or could wish to use this to represent a change in the general level of interest rates. You can also set the average growth rate for the value of your property and see a tabulation or chart of your repayments and the equity to debt ratio in your property.
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This is essentially the same as the repayment calculator, but caters for two mortgages! Trying to work out which mortgage will cost you more over the life of the loan isn't as simple as you might expect, as some products have more up-front costs and others have a higher long term rate, making comparison very difficult. This calculator cuts through the complexity and allows you to compare two products over the full term of a mortgage or over any specified length of time.
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Remortgaging has become very popular over the last few years as more and more borrowers have woken up to the fact that they can sometimes save themselves money by switching to one of the many discounted rates of interest that have increasingly been on offer from British lenders. Use this calculator to help you work out if it is really worth it, or whether you would really be better off staying put and getting to the end of your term.
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If you had been at the homebuyer exhibition in London last month and been to the seminar on buy to let, you would have heard one expert claiming that ARLA should have called the scheme "Borrow to let", on account of the drastic impact that borrowing can have on the returns you enjoy on your initial investment in residential property. Whilst this calculator won't show you how you can keep boosting your ROI by borrowing against and growing your existing portfolio of properties, it will help you calculate short-term ROI on investment property and see the effect on your returns of using (or not using) a mortgage to fund your activities.
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We hope these calculators will provide you with some useful assistance in making your decisions. However, please remember that they should not directly determine your decisions and you should always seek professional advice if you are in any doubt as to your course of action or product selection.