Built after a first home purchase that should have been simpler than it was.
Homabu started with a frustrating first-hand experience of buying a home in the UK. The standard affordability figure quoted early on didn't factor in how much the specific property would change things — a short lease, an ex-local-authority building, or a flat above a shop could all change what was actually available, but that nuance rarely came up until well into the process.
Property portals didn't help either — service charges, one of the biggest ongoing costs of buying a leasehold flat, aren't required to be published on listings at all. The result was wasted time, wasted viewings, and decisions made with less information than they should have required.
Most tools in this space are built to help you borrow more. Homabu is built to help you understand what you can safely and honestly afford — including a comfort margin, not just a ceiling — and to be upfront about the lending nuances that a headline number glosses over.
Homabu is named after Mount Homabu, a peak in Papua New Guinea's Southern Highlands. Getting a clear view before you commit to something significant felt like the right idea to build a brand around — a home purchase is one of the few decisions in life where a bit of altitude, and a clearer line of sight, genuinely changes the outcome.
See what you can honestly afford, including the lending nuances that matter.
Get started →You can use the calculator and property check without an account; what you type stays in your browser. Google Analytics only runs if you accept it in the cookie banner, and the optional research data (banded ranges, never exact figures) is only collected if you also tick “Help improve Homabu”. If you have an account, we store your email and the numbers and properties you choose to save. We never sell your personal data.
Our privacy notice explains what we collect, why, who helps us run the site, how long we keep it and your rights, including how to download your data, delete your account or make a complaint.
Homabu links to a small number of independent partners — a mortgage broker, a conveyancing comparison service, a home insurance comparison site, and Checkmyfile, a credit report service. We may earn a commission if you use these links, at no extra cost to you.
Partners are chosen for genuine fit with a first-time buyer's actual next step, not for the size of the commission they pay. We favour whole-of-market brokers and comparison services over single-provider tie-ups, for the same reason the calculator shows every mortgage tier rather than just the standard one: a bigger number isn't automatically a better outcome, and neither is the first option offered to you.
Question, correction, partnership enquiry, a request about your data, or just want to say hello — send a message and it'll come straight through.